There was a friend of the family of whose name I have no remembrance, and whom, from a certain personal peculiarity, I must denominate Snaggletooth. He was a large man--very tall, and round in proportion--with a glistening bald head, a smooth full-fleshed face, and clear gray eyes. In repose, and when he was not speaking, he was by no means an unpleasant-looking man; his face was benignant, and his clear gray eyes beamed kindly upon you. But directly he smiled he became transformed, and his features were made to assume an almost fiendish expression by reason of a hideous snaggle-tooth which thrust itself forward immediately he opened his mouth. It stuck out like a horn, and the change it effected in his appearance was something marvellous. As the friend of the family, Snaggletooth came forward and offered his assistance. My father being confined to his bed by sickness, there was no man in the house to look after the funeral of my grandmother, and Snaggletooth's services were gladly accepted. I fancy that he was fond of funerals, from the zealous manner in which he attended to the details of this and a sadder one which followed not long afterwards. Setting this fancy aside, he proved himself a genuine and disinterested friend. We had no near relatives; my mother was an only daughter, and my father had but one brother, older than he, whom I had never seen, and who had disappeared from the place many years ago. He was supposed to be dead; and from certain chance words which I must have heard, I had gained a vague impression that he was not a credit to the family. It was a strange experience for me to sit in my grandmother's room after her death, gazing at her empty armchair. I could not keep away from the room; I crept into it at all hours of the day, and sat there trembling. I mentally asked the stone monkey-figure what it thought of my grandmother's death, and I put my fingers in my ears lest I should hear an answer. Jane Painter found me there in the evening when she came to put me to bed, and stated that my grandmother's spirit was present, and that she was in communication with it. She held imaginary conversations with my grandmother's ghost in the dusk, speaking very softly and waiting for the answers. The effect was ghastly and terrifying. These conversations related to nothing but poor me, and the exquisite pain Jane Painter inflicted upon me by these means may be easily imagined. The first thing Snaggletooth did after my grandmother's funeral was to search for her long stocking and the treasures it was supposed to contain. Taking the words in their literal sense, I really thought that the long stocking would be found hidden somewhere--under the bed perhaps, or among the feathers, or up the chimney--stuffed with money, in shape resembling my grandmother's leg, which I knew from actual observation to be a substantial one.