Now, Mr. Editor, I am very sure _you_ can sympathize with my friend in these petty annoyances. Did you never feel your bile, if you _have_ any, bubbling up, on returning to your sanctum, after having left your papers and proofs in apple-pie order, finding them all knocked into pi, as your affectionate friends, the compositors, would call it? But Mr. Crofton being a gentleman of an uncommonly amiable disposition, said little, in fact nothing, about it, believing it to be occasioned by the maid, in her assiduity to keep his room “tidy.” As, however, repeated and increased annoyances of this kind will, in time, ruffle the sweetest temper, Mr. Crofton one day, in the mildest possible manner, ventured to tell the damsel it would much oblige him, if she would be kind enough always to leave his papers and books exactly as she found them. To his surprise, the girl burst into tears, and said she was very glad he had named it, as she had now an excuse for giving her mistress warning to quit her service. On inquiring her reason for conduct which seemed to him rather extraordinary, she said, “There is something wrong about this house, sir. I never touch your books or papers, and sometimes when I am cleaning the room, I hear whisperings near me, sometimes groans and moanings, as of a person in distress. I have searched every corner, but can discover nothing. I am sure the house is haunted by the spirit of some woman who has been murdered.” Mr. Crofton was more surprised at this recital, than he chose to express, as he had himself reason to suspect there was some secret mystery to be cleared up; but he comforted Marianne with the assurance that, if she would say nothing about it, and would endeavor to arrange the room whilst he was taking his breakfast in the bay-window, he would lock the door when he went out to his office, and carry the key with him. This plan proved extremely acceptable to Marianne, because Mr. Crofton’s kind, gentlemanly manners, and very handsome Christmas present, had probably made a deeper impression on her simple heart, than she was, perhaps, aware of, or would have been willing to admit. Soon after this arrangement was entered into, Mr. Crofton was seized with a complaint to which he was occasionally subject; it was, in fact, a fit of the gout; and during the first night of his confinement to the house, as he lay reading, with his candle on a small round-table, which stood close by the bed-side, he noticed that the light was becoming paler and fainter; when looking up from his book, he was astonished and amazed beyond the power of utterance, to observe that the table was moving, silently and slowly away, and by degrees gliding from the bed-side.