"Oh! we are both bad enough to try to improve," exclaimed Agnes absently. "Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter. He came down every evening, and began respectfully to bow to Agnes and to smile on Podge, and then stretched his feet out to the ottoman, drew his tablets up to the small table and proceeded to write. They hallooed into his ear once or twice, but he said he was deaf as a mill-stone, and might be cursed to his face and wouldn't understand it. They had formed a pleasing opinion of him, not unmixed with curiosity, when one night he wrote on the back of a piece of paper: "Have you any idea who wrote this anonymous note to me?" Podge Byerly took the note and found in a woman's handwriting these words: "Mr. Duff Salter, I suppose you know where you are. Your hostesses are very insinuating and artful--and what else, _you can find out_! One man has been murdered in that family; another has disappeared. They say in Kensington the house of Zane is haunted. "A WARNER." Podge read the note, and her tears dropped upon it. He moved forward as if to speak to her, but correcting himself hastily, he wrote upon the tablets: "Not even a suspicious person is affected the least by an anonymous letter. I only keep it that possibly I may detect the sender!" CHAPTER IV. A SUITOR. Duff Salter and the ladies were sitting in the back parlor one evening following the events just related, when the door-bell rang, and Podge Byerly went to see who was there. She soon returned and closed the door of the front parlor, leaving a little crack, by accident, and lighted the gas there. "Aggy," whispered Podge, coming in, "there's Mr. Calvin Van de Lear, our future minister. He's elegantly dressed, and has a nosegay in his hand." "Can't you entertain him, dear?" "I would be glad enough, but he asked in a very decided way for you." "For me?" Agnes looked distressed. "Yes; he said very distinctly, 'I called to pay my respects particularly to Miss Agnes to-night.'" Agnes left the room, and Duff Salter and Podge were again together. Podge could hear plainly what was said in the front parlor, and partly see, by the brighter light there, the motions of the visitor and her friend. She wrote on Duff Salter's tablet, "A deaf man is a great convenience!" "Why?" wrote the large, grave man. "Because he can't hear what girls say to their beaux." "Is that a beau calling on our beautiful friend?" "I'm afraid so!" "How do you feel when a beau comes?" "We feel important." "You don't feel grateful, then; only complimented." "No; we feel that on one of two occasions we have the advantage over a man. We can play him like a big fish on a little angle." "When is the other occasion?" "Some women," wrote Podge, "play just the same with the man they marry!" Duff Salter looked up surprised. "Isn't that wrong?" he wrote. She answered mischievously, "A kind of!"