The next day was Monday. When Lady Whitney came down in the morning the first thing she told us was, that she had not slept. All the curious symptoms of restless disturbance, of inward agitation, which we had experienced, had visited her. "I will not give in, my dears," she said, bravely. "It may be, you know, that what I had heard against the room took all sleep out of me, though I was not conscious of it; so I shall keep to it. I must say it is a most comfortable bed." She "kept" to the room until the Wednesday; three nights in all; getting no sleep. Then she gave in. Occasionally during the third night, when she was dropping asleep from exhaustion, she was startled up from it in sudden terror: terror of she knew not what. Just as it had been with me and with John. On the Wednesday morning she told Susannah that they must give her the back-room opposite mine, and we would abandon that front-room altogether. "It is just as though there were a ghost in the room," she said to Susannah. "Perhaps there is, my lady," was Susannah's cool reply. * * * * * On the Friday evening Dr. and Mrs. Parafin came in to tea. Our visit would end on the morrow. The old doctor held John before him in the lamplight, and decided that he looked better--that the stay had done him good. "I am sure it has," assented Lady Whitney. "Just at first I feared he was going backward: but that must have been owing to the sleepless nights." "Sleepless nights!" echoed the doctor, in a curious tone. "For the first three nights of our stay here, he never slept; _never slept at all_. After that----" "Which room did he occupy?" interrupted the doctor, breathlessly. "Not the one over this?" "Yes, it was. Why? Do you know anything against it?" questioned Lady Whitney, for she saw Dr. and Mrs. Parafin exchange glances. "Only this: that I have heard of other people who were unable to sleep in that room," he answered. "But what can be amiss with the room, Dr. Parafin?" "Ah," said he, "there you go beyond me. It is, I believe, a fact, a singular fact, that there is something or other in the room which prevents people from sleeping. Friends of ours who lived in the house before Miss Gay took it, ended by shutting the room up." "Is it haunted, sir?" I asked. "Mr. Featherston thought it might be." He looked at me and smiled, shaking his head. Mrs. Parafin nodded hers, as much as to say _It is_. "No one has been able to get any sleep in that room since the Calsons lived here," said Mrs. Parafin, dropping her voice. "How very strange!" cried Lady Whitney. "One might think murder had been done in it." Mrs. Parafin coughed significantly. "The wife died in it," she said. "Some people thought her husband had--had--had at least hastened her death----" "Hush, Matty!" interposed the doctor, warningly. "It was all rumour, all talk. Nothing was proved--or attempted to be."