"Oh!" some one will say; "but look at the nasty murdering thing and the poor flies struggling in its net, while the dear bees live upon nectar and honey!" Who killed and murdered most wilfully all those poor unfortunate chuckle-headed drones this summer, eh? But to my haunted house once more. What a crusade against rats and mice--what inspecting of old furniture--and sending this to the lumber-room, and that to be polished and rubbed up--what choosing of suitable new objects, and fitting up the old-fashioned rooms again, mingling just enough of the modern to add to the comfort of the old, without destroying its delicious quaintness. For I like an old house, with its crooks and corners, and bo-peep passages, and closets, and steps, and ins and outs, wainscots, old pictures, and memories of the past. Why, no one with a thinking apparatus of his own can be dull in such a place for calling up the scenes of the past, and trying to trace the old place's history. Then, again, the garden. How glorious to leave to nature her beauties, and only take away the foul and rank; cutting back here and rescuing there, and bringing the neglected place into a charming wilderness--a place that nature has robbed of its old formal primness, and, setting art at defiance, made it her own. Yes, if some one will kindly put me in the way of getting such a place for a residence I shall be his or her debtor, while for recompense, as soon as ever matters have been a bit seen to, and the place is habitable, they shall have the honour of first sleeping in the most haunted room in the house. This is, I am well aware, a very choice kind of house, but that there are such places every one is aware, and my story is to be about one of these old man-forsaken spots, that years ago existed in Hertfordshire. I say years ago existed, for though the house still stands, it is in a dreadfully modernised form. Wings were pulled down, wainscotings torn out, and the place so altered that a tenant was found, and the haunters so disgusted with their home that the noises ceased, and the old reputation was forgotten. I write this story as it was told to me by a friend, in whose word I have faith sufficient to vouch for the truth of what he heard. There was an old legend attached to the place, something relating to the right of possession, and some one coming home to oust the then holder of the estate; then followed midnight murder, the concealment of the deed, and, as 'tis said, the spirits of the murderer and murdered haunted the scene of the dread deed.