I T is the discomfort of the thing which comes back upon me, I believe, most forcibly. Of course it was horrible, too, emphatically horrible, but the prolonged, sustained, baffling discomfort of my position is what has left the mark. The growing suspicion, the uncanny circumstances, my long knowledge of that presence: it is all extraordinary, not least, the part I somehow managed to play. I was housekeeper at the time for little Mrs. Brane. How I had come to be her housekeeper might have served

D OWNSTAIRS, the little room that opened from the drawing-room was given to me by Mrs. Brane for my “office.” Here every morning Jane, Annie, and Delia came to me for orders. It was a fortnight after my arrival, everything having run smoothly and uneventfully, when, earlier than usual, there came footsteps and a rap on the door of this room. My “Come in” served to admit all three old women, treading upon one another's heels. So odd and so ridiculous was their appearance that I had some ado to ke

I FOUND Mary, with Robbie, in the garden. She got up from her rustic chair under a big magnolia tree, and came hurrying to meet me, more to keep me from her charge, I thought, than to shorten my walk. She need not have distressed herself. I felt keenly enough Robbie's daytime fear of me, but that I should inspire horrible dreams of red-haired women bending over his bed at night, filled me with a real terror of the child. I would not, for anything, have come near to him. I stopped and waited for

I ”LL be glad to get at this kitchen,” said Mary when we went down to survey the scene of our impromptu labors; “those old women were abominably careless. Why, they left enough food about and wasted enough to feed an army. I would n't wonder, miss, if some of them blacks from outside come in here and make a fine meal off of pickin's. They could easy enough, and Mrs. Brane never miss it.” “I dare say,” said I, inspecting the bright, cheerful place with real pleasure; “but, at any rate, Delia was

M ARY'S labors and mine did not last very long. At the end of a week, a promising couple applied for the position described in Mrs. Brane's advertisement. They drove up to the house in a hired hack one morning, and Mrs. Brane and I interviewed them in my little office. They were English people, and had one or two super-excellent references. These were rather antiquated, to be sure, dating to a time before the couple's marriage, but they explained that for a long while they had been living on the

I WENT to bed early that night, and, partially undressing myself, I put on a wrapper and sat on my bed reading till Mary should come to tell me that Robbie had fallen asleep, and that it was time for our night-watch to begin. I had not spoken to Mary again on the subject, for soon after my investigations in the kitchen, Mrs. Brane had asked me to help her in her work of going over the old, long-closed drawers and wardrobes in the north wing, and I had had a very busy and tiring afternoon. It was

I T was fortunate for us all, especially for poor Mary, that, after Robbie's death, Mrs. Brane needed every care and attention that we could give her. For myself, I had expected prompt dismissal, but, as it turned out, Mrs. Brane more than ever insisted upon my staying on as housekeeper. Neither Mary, because of her loyalty to me, nor Paul Dabney, for some less friendly reason, had told the poor little woman of the cause of Robbie's death, nor of their suspicions concerning my complicity, uncons

I CAME to my senses. I looked up slowly. The thing was gone. I put out the light and fled like a hunted creature to my room. There I locked myself in and dropped down on my knees beside my bed. At first it was entirely a battle with fear that kept me, rigid and silent, on my knees. I knew that unless I overcame the extremity of my nervous terror, I should lose my mind. If I went out of my room at all, it would be to go raving and shrieking down the hall and to alarm the house. Self-control was p

I WAS surprised to find, when I examined myself in the glass next morning, that I did not look like a person that has seen a ghost. I had rather more color than usual and my eyes were bright; also the fact that I had controlled and overcome my nerves seemed to have acted like a tonic to my whole system. In some mysterious way I had tapped a whole reservoir of nervous strength and resilience. The same thing often happens physically: one is tired to the very point of exhaustion, one goes on, there

I HAVE always loved pine trees since that desperate afternoon, for the very practical reason that the needles prevent the growth of underbrush. My skirts were left free, and my feet had their full opportunity for speed, and I needed every ounce of strength and breath. Before I came to the top of the last steep slope that plunged down to the stream, I heard a hoarse, choking cry, that terrible cry for “Help! Help! Help!” It was a man's voice, but so thick and weak and hollow that I could not reco

I N vain I tortured my wits; here and there a word was comprehensible. I made out the number 5 and fairly ground my teeth. Here was the key to the secret; here was my chart, and I could not decipher it. I folded up the paper with great care, ripped open a seam of my mattress, and folded the mystery in. By night I would keep it there; by day I would carry it about on my body. Somehow, I would think out a way to decipher it; I would go to New York and interview a priest of the Greek Church. If nec

I MEANT to ask Mrs. Brane the next morning to excuse me from my work of cataloguing the books of her husband's library. I had no courage to face Paul Dabney. Unluckily, Mrs. Brane did not come down to breakfast. She had a severe headache. I did not like to disturb her with my request, nor did I like to give up my duty without permission, for the catalogue was nearly completed and Mrs. Brane was very impatient about it, so I dragged myself into the bookroom at the usual time. Paul Dabney was not

I WAS so excited by the importance of Mary's accidental discovery that I folded up the paper, thrust it into my pocket, and was turning towards the desk, when Mary, in an aggrieved voice, recalled herself to my attention. “Well, miss, maybe it ain't my business, and, maybe, it is, and I don't want to push myself forward, but—” “Oh, Mary,” I said, “indeed it is your business, and a very important business, too, and just as soon as I think it safe to tell you, I will, every word of it; only I have

T HE woman who had so unmercifully used me had not taken into account the fact that the spirit is stronger than the flesh. Certainly, the next morning I wanted nothing so much as to lie still in my bed for a week. My cuts and bruises were stiff and sore; I ached from head to foot. But my resolution was strong. I had my meals sent up to me that day, however, but in the evening, after dinner, I sent for Sara. She came and presented herself, sullen and impassive, at the foot of my bed. I fixed my e

I LIGHTED my candle and stepped into the closet, shutting the door behind me. The small space, no longer cluttered by old odds and ends of gardening tools, was clear to my eyes in every corner, and presented so commonplace an appearance that I was almost ready to believe that nightmares had possessed me lately, and that an especially vivid one had brought me to stand absurdly here in the sleeping house peering at an innocent board wall. Nevertheless, I set down my candle on the floor and attacke

I HAD news of Brane's death from the very priest whose hands I had mutilated in the door of the trap. The fellow had been disciplined, unfrocked, driven from Russia, where it was no longer possible for him to make a living, and, as my method is, I had kept in touch with him. I had even helped him to make a sort of fresh start—oh, by no means an honorable one—in America, and purposely I'd seen to it that his new activities should keep him in the neighborhood of Pine Cone. One who knows the underw

I HAD listened to all this as though to voices in a fever. I had been trying to get up my courage for a leap. It seemed to me now a desperate, hopeless undertaking, but it was easier to die in a struggle than to lie there in cold blood while she strangled me with those long, cold, iron hands. She was not calm. I could see that her eyes were shifting, her arms and legs twitched, her fingers moved restlessly. Black and hard as her lost soul must be, it shrank a little from this killing. The murder

W ITH the death of Madame Trème, and the arrest of Jaffrey and of Maida, the danger to “The Pines” was over. It was a long time, however, before I was allowed to tell my story. I lay in a darkened room, waited upon by Mary, and the least sound or word would send me into a paroxysm of hysterical tears. The first person to whom I recounted my adventures was the detective Hovey, a certain gray-eyed and demure young man whom I had long known by another name. Our interview was very formal. I called h