They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed together an enormous structure--Lyon must make a point of going all over it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before--it hadn't been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house--he had not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was very curious indeed--a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret staircase. To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful. There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before, during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period. 'My room is in the old part too then--I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity of the corridor and staircase--the first short one--after I came out. That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away, in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much impression on it), for half a mile.' 'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling. 'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked. His companion looked at him a moment. 'Ah, you know about that?' 'No, I don't speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any luck--I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see--whatever there is, the regular thing. _Is_ there a ghost here?' 'Of course there is--a rattling good one.' 'And have you seen him?' 'Oh, don't ask me what _I've_ seen--I should tax your credulity. I don't like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad--that is, as good!--rooms as you'll find anywhere.' 'Do you mean in my corridor?' Lyon asked. 'I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to sleep there.' 'Ill-advised?' 'Until you've finished your job. You'll get letters of importance the next morning, and you'll take the 10.20.' 'Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?'