"I am sure I don't know," Mrs. Dawkins replied. "But I don't like this box. I think there is something very unpleasant about it. I haven't been myself for the last few minutes. When I was sitting by you just now, I suddenly became obsessed with a bitter hatred against everyone on the stage. The very sight of them maddened me. It seemed to me I had met them all in a former existence and that they had done me some irreparable injury. I got up and began to plot how I could best get even with them. Then the idea of setting fire to the theatre seized me. I had clear visions of a small, dimly lighted room, with which I was strangely familiar, down below the stage in a dark, draughty basement. I knew every inch of the place as if I had lived there all my life. 'I will go there,' I said to myself, 'and apply a match. If anyone sees me, no one will suspect. They will only say, "It's old Tom. He didn't get the chuck after all. He's come back."' I was repeating the words 'It's old Tom,' and 'Fire,' when something seemed to strike me very forcibly on the forehead. This caused me the greatest agony for a moment. Then you spoke, and I was myself again." "Would you like to go home?" Miss Dawkins asked anxiously. "I think I would," was the response. And they went. Subsequently, a few judicious inquiries elicited no little light on the matter. Many years before, an old actor, called Tom Weston, had been employed annually in pantomime at the Lombard as clown. Like so many of his profession, however, particularly the older ones, he took to drink; and he was so often intoxicated on the stage that the management were at last obliged to dismiss him. He took his dismissal very badly, and one night, having gone to the theatre in disguise, he was discovered in the act of setting fire to a room immediately beneath the stage. In consideration for his many years' service and age, the management did not prosecute, but recommended his friends to keep him under close supervision. Tom, however, very soon ceased to cause the management any anxiety, for, two days after he had attempted, in so diabolical a manner, to wreak his vengeance on all who had been associated with him at the theatre, he shot himself dead in his own home. But on every anniversary of his death, so it is affirmed, he is either seen or heard, or his presence is in some way demonstrated, in box 3 of the Lombard Theatre. That his spirit should frequent that particular spot in the theatre seems to be a fact for which no reason can be assigned. CHAPTER VI THE RETICULE Between Norwich and Swaffham, low down in a little valley, there once stood a mill. It is now a ruin, and all the people round studiously avoid it after nightfall. It must be admitted that they have some reason for doing so in view of the incidents I am about to relate.