'And make us the laughing-stock of the whole town!'

'I'm not afraid of ridicule, and I am afraid of

'Ghosts?'

'Who said any thing about ghosts? Your mind is so full of trash! Do you suppose there's a White Lady of Avenel in every old house? No, if it is n't a trick, it is some of this electrical phenomena that every one is dabbling in; if people had let it alone it would n't have come to this pass!'

'You don't think it is Cousin Harry's pranks then?'

'I don't know; the letters may have been. Where can those letters be, Frances? Are you sure there were any? Have n't we been dreaming?'

'Nightmares in daytime then. How absurd, mother! I should think some one else was demented.'

'Remember to whom you are speaking, if you please.'

'It's very odd, I think, that Jane and Tim are n't troubled,' I resumed after a pause; 'that it is all confined to this room

'Or where you are. I should n't wonder if you were that thing they call a mejum,' said my mother, turning up her nose with a sniff and a little attempt at satire. 'I'll have the Doctor to-morrow and see. There, read your book, and let me have a little peace.'

We had a dreadful evening, neither of us spoke any more, and we both tried to keep our eyes on the page; but novels come to an end, and so at last, not having comprehended a syllable, I read the word Finis of ' Afraja,' and shut the book. Mother was nodding in her chair; I went and locked the doors, lit my candle, kissed her, and was very soon curled in my little bed in my own room, having left mother in hers. No sooner had the chill of my nest worn off than I was startled ⚫ by a perfectly inexplicable noise. There was a strange clicking sound down-stairs, echoing through the lonely halls and rooms, a light tap, and sharp, quick, regular beat, as if one were measuring over and over again every inch of moulding and mop-board in the breakfast-parlor, with a two-foot rule. I knew there was nobody in the house, perhaps mother didn't hear, and so hoping she did n't, though my heart was beating in time with this mysterious knocking, I lay down again, tried not to hear, and began to hum myself to sleep. But do all I might, I could not help stopping every now and then to listen if the noise had stopped too. There it rapped on steadily through the night and the stillness with a horrid monotony and indifference. At length, the last time, I failed to detect it, and the old tranquillity reigned once more. By-and-by the fear faded and drowsiness set in. I was just in that dreamy state from which you awake falling down unknown depths, when I instantly sprang up in bed, roused by a second peculiar and unaccountable occurrence. I had not actually heard a syllable murmured, but it seemed that more distinctly than any sound could have articulated them, those terrible words had filled my ear: SIX X SEVEN.

If a voice had really and audibly broken the silence when I knew I was alone, it would not have been so horrifying as this unspoken but perfectly recognized sentence addressed so powerfully to some spiritual sense. I was perfectly sure that some phantom, some creature, or power, had saluted me. It was a night of still frost out-doors, I knew, quiet and cloudy; no light of moon or stars, not a breath stirred any bough, not a red leaf fluttered in the darkness to the sodden ground; but now, leaning on my elbow and looking about the room, I found it filled with an atmosphere like moonshine, pallid and lucid; through it the long muslin curtains swayed, the snowy toilet-covers waved, the little mirror gleamed; all at once it went out, and then, as if a giant had taken the old house in his grasp and shaken it, the walls thrilled from their foundation with sharp tremulous vibrations, every pane in every window rattled and clattered, and stroke followed stroke on the north-east corner of the house with loud malignity and diabolical swiftness. Knock after knock, as if some fiend swung ponderous hammers about his restless forge. Trembling, and covered with a cold perspiration, I hid my head in the blankets, and whether I fainted or slept cannot tell, only when I woke it was broad day, and Jane had just brought the warm water into my room.

'Didn't you hear a dreadful noise last night, Jane?' I asked.

'Oh! yes, Miss. Tim an' I says to each other, sez we, we guessed it was an earthquake or something.'

'Very likely.'

'Ye'd best hurry yourself, Miss Frances; there's abody downstairs would like to see you. Maybe ye 'll be down before your ma.' And herewith Jane took her empty pail and her departure.

In about twenty minutes, shivering and blue, I ran down to the cosy breakfast-room, where a bright coal fire was already glittering, and a cheerful warmth diffusing itself sufficiently to compensate for all last night's chills and terrors. As I opened the door, who should start to his feet, overthrowing the chair, and then staying to pick it up instead of coming to greet me, but Cousin Harry. In a minute more he caught my frozen hands.

'Cold as ice, or as mine,' he said. 'Come here to the fire and warın them, puss. And then tell me about these confounded letters.'

'Yes, tell me about them, Harry,' I answered.

'Tell you about them? What shall I tell, except that I received them?'

'You received them, Harry?,

'Yes, and now what did you send them for?'

'I did n't send them.'

'Did n't send them?'

'I don't understand. I send those letters to you? No! But did n't you send them to me?,

'What in heaven's name are you talking about? Have you, too, had any letters containing just three words, and those -' 'Six times seven,' shouted the starling in his cage.

'Curse the bird!' cried Harry, running his hands through his hair and commencing to walk the room.

'Willingly, if you 'll only explain yourself,' I replied.

'Well, listen then: I have received two letters, from which at first I could make nothing, and then deciphered the words, 'Six,' began the starling. I threw a veil over the cage. 'Times seven,' concluded I. 'Well, and did that bring you here?' 'Why, I could only decide that you must be in some trouble.' 'Harry, I can't believe you got any such thing."

'Can't believe it? Why here they are, look at them; these are the very letters. Perhaps ocular demonstration will satisfy the Court,

'Every thing seems so wild and absurd, that - are you sure?, 'Sure?' he asked. What should make me sure? Why, look here while I get them out; here they are, I brought them with me! These are the very letters!' and with the utmost confidence at this juncture, Harry thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. 'Wait a moment,' said he, 'I- they are in the other. Thereupon he felt in another receptacle, slapped it vigorously, and repeated the operation in both pockets, but of course with no results. Neither were the letters forthcoming from the skirts of his coat. 'I could n't have left them in my cloak,' he muttered, and stepped into the entry, ransacked the article in question, and tore the lining out of his travelling-cap. He came back with a low whistle of discomfiture. 'By George!' said he, 'I can't be sure! The letters are gone. Let me see yours.' 'I told you that they too disappeared.' Another low whistle.

'And what's this about the knocking on the corner there? Jane said it was an earthquake.'

I described it as well as I was able, for at the remembrance my teeth chattered, and if it had not been for a plantation of hair-pins my hair would have stood on end.

'Do you know,' said he, interrupting me once and stopping suddenly in his walk, 'that as we were thundering along in the cars last night at just that time, I heard the self-same noise, but took it for a part of the inevitable jar and joggle of journeys?'

When I finished, Harry came to my side at the fire; a queer look

sobered his face slowly. Where's Aunt Katie?' he asked with an effort to be careless. 'Isn't it rather late for her to be up-stairs?' I caught his meaning directly. O Harry!' I cried. 'You don't think,

Just then the door opened, and looking pale as though she had n't slept a wink, mother made her appearance. She welcomed Harry as if he were a guardian angel, and plunged into the mysteries at once. 'I went for my letters as the fox went for his goose, Aunt Katie,' said he, concluding all he had to say, 'and the goose was n't there.' 'It is the very work of Satan!' she commented.

We must get to the bottom of it,' said Harry, 'be it miching

mallecho or what not."

'Let us breakfast first, interposed I. 'Don't you smell the old Java, Harry? It seems just like one of those frosty mornings when we were children here together."

'You like those old times, Fanny?' he asked, as mother went to make the repast a little more sumptuous in honor of the guest.

'Fine weather, fine health, and fine company, make any time pleasant.'

'All which you have this morning.'

O Harry! I shall be so frightened again when you are gone! If you would only stay a little,

'I should like to stay forever,' said Cousin Harry, putting a hand on my shoulder, 'if you would give me leave.'

But here mother came back, followed by Jane with a tray of unexpected commodities, so I didn't need to answer Cousin Harry, and we had breakfast. Harry was amusing himself balancing all the spoons within his reach, like so many silver Ravels and Blondins, when I whirled round the lees in my tea-cup three times - mother wouldn't let me have coffee, because I was nervous - and gave them to mother to read my fortune in. She made a quick exclamation and dropped the cup. Fortunately I caught it and searched it eagerly, while Harry came and looked over me. There, written as plainly as tea-grounds could write, were the mysterious and now truly terrible words:

'SIX X SEVEN."

'Heavens!' said my mother, 'has it begun again?'

'It's high time to investigate the affair,' said Harry with a laugh. 'You won't laugh after dark, Sir,' said I.

'Or will laugh at the other side of my mouth? No- really though, what does six by seven mean? Does it mean that this garden ground is six rods wide by seven deep, and that you'll make your fortune, Aunt Katie, by selling it in strips? or that you are to take six paces one way in this room, and seven in another, which will bring you to a

spot where Uncle Noll buried untold gold? If it were six feet by two, now, the interpretation would not be so difficult. Can it allude to Sixth-street or Seventh in Philadelphia, or Sixth Avenue and Seventh in New-York, or to the years since Uncle Noll's death and Crampton's imprisonment? I'll tell you what, Fanny, I mean to try and get that fellow out.'

'Fellow! He's a patriarch! He'll be too old to care, Harry three-score-and-ten

'Well, I'll care; some body ought to. I don't believe he killed Mr. Oliver Gordon any more than that I did, I who was the babe unborn at that period. Two precious firebrands they were! Six to one and'

'Six times,' commenced the starling.

'Well, we'll say seven to the other, maybe, and so are thrown back on that infernal topic. It 's of no use travelling in this circle.

'Come Harry, do n't trifle,' said mother.

'Let me consider, Aunt Katie,' he said, rubbing his finger over his mustache. 'Do these talismanic syllables refer to the fact that yesterday was the sixth and to-day the seventh of October; or to your ancient belief, that the seventh hen - old Speckle, is she eaten? - has hidden a nest of six eggs in the hay-mow, said nest being really a mare's nest; or to the intersection of the sixth and seventh arches down cellar, where we shall find the skeleton of a nun once walled up alive,

or

'How provoking you are, child!' said mother. 'How can you play so?'

'There, Auntie, I won't. It is my private suspicion that that rum old cove

'What!'

'A trillion pardons; that Uncle Noll and his secretary and the ring and so on, are mixed up in this affair. Now

'Six,' cried the starling in a burst not to be any longer repressed. 'Si-i-ix six ti-i-i-imes!'

'Now, can the words from the onus of whose pronunciation Monsieur Tonson so kindly relieves us, can they have any connection with, for instance, the seventh pigeon-hole from this corner of the secretary here to the sixth from that; or with some hour in the dial-plate, there to be indicated by counting seven spaces one way and six another; or with that little six-by-seven-inch silhouette hanging yonder in the north-east corn-'

Suddenly, while the gay mocker spoke, the air of the whole room became dark and hot, dark as night, so that we could not see each other's faces, and hot with a dry crackling oven-heat that was parching and painful to the last degree. It endured only one breathless