But he was no match for Jane Painter, and he retired from the contest discomfited; did not even stop to wash his face. My mother was sad and puzzled. I did not entirely realise at the time the cause of her sadness, because I did not know how poor she really was, but I learnt it afterwards. She gathered sufficient courage to tell Jane Painter that of course she could not stop in the house after what she had said. 'If every hair in your head was a diamond,' gasped Jane Painter, 'I wouldn't stop. No, not if you went down on your bended knees! I'll go to-morrow.' Then she pounced upon two silk dresses and some other articles of clothing, and said that my grandmother had given them to her. My mother submitted without a word, and Jane Painter marched to her room and locked them in her box. She did as much mischief as she could on her last evening in our house; broke things purposely and revenged herself grandly on poor little me. After undressing and putting me to bed as usual, and after smelling about the room, and under the bed, and up the chimney for blood, she imparted to me the cheerful intelligence that my grandmother's ghost would come and take me away exactly at twelve o'clock that night. Near to our house was a church, and many a night had I lain awake waiting for the tolling of the hour; but I never listened with such intensity of purpose as I listened on this night. As midnight drew near, I clenched my fists, I bit my lips, I drew my knees almost up to my nose. I trembled and shook in the darkness. I would not look, I thought; and when the hour tolled, every note seemed charged with terrible meaning, and I shut my eyes tighter and held my breath under the clothes. But when the bell had done tolling, my state of horrible curiosity and fear compelled me to peep out, and there in the middle of the room stood a tall figure in white. So loud and shrill were my hysterical cries that my mother ran into the room, there to find Jane Painter in her nightdress. I think the woman herself; fearful lest she had gone too far, was glad to quit the house the following day without being called to account for her misdeeds. She did not leave without a few parting words. She called us all a parcel of thieves, and said that a judgment would fall upon us one day for robbing a poor servant of the money her dead mistress had left her. CHAPTER IV. I MURDER MY BABY-BROTHER. Misfortunes never come singly, and they did not come singly to us. It was not for us to give the lie to a proverb. Often in a family, death is in a hurry when it commences, and takes one after another quickly; then pauses for a long breath.