"In a hurry to-night, ain't you, Pegram?" inquired Mr. Dickey, as the proprietor returned, brushing flakes of snow from his coat and shivering expressively. "Well, not particular," replied Mr. Pegram, with a deliberation which confirmed his words, "but it's pretty nigh nine, and Sally she ast me not to be later _than_ nine to-night, for our hired girl's gone home for a spell, and that makes it kind of lonesome for Sally: the baby don't count for much, only when he cries, and I'll do him the justice to say that isn't often." "It's a new thing for Sally to be scary, ain't it?" queried Mr. Crumlish, with an expression of mild surprise. "Well, yes, I may say it is," admitted Mr. Pegram; "but, you know, we had a kind of a warning, before we moved in, that all wasn't quite as it should be, and, as bad luck would have it, there was a Boston paper come round her new coat, with a story in it that laid out to be true, of noises and appearances, and one thing and another, in a house right there to Boston, and Sally she says to me, 'If they believe in them things to Boston, where they don't believe in nothing they can't see and handle, if all we hear's true, there must be something in it, and I only wish I'd read that piece before we took the house.' "I keep a-telling her we've neither seen nor heard nothing out of the common, so far, but all she'll say to that is, 'That's no reason we won't;' and sure enough it isn't, though I don't tell her so." "But surely," said Mr. Birchard, the young schoolmaster, who boarded with Mr. Dickey, "you don't believe any such trash as that account of a haunted house in Boston?" There was a non-committal silence, and he went on impatiently, "I could give you a dozen instances in which mysteries of this kind, when they were energetically followed up, were proved to be the results of the most simple and natural causes." "Like enough, like enough, young man," said Uncle Jabez Snyder, in his tremulous tones, "and mebbe some folks not a hunderd miles from here could tell you another dozen that hadn't no natural causes." "I should like very much to hear them," replied the young man, with an exasperatingly incredulous smile. "If Pegram here wasn't in such a durned hurry to turn us out and shet up," said Mr. Dickey, with manifest irritation, "Uncle Jabez could tell you all you want to hear." Mr. Pegram looked disturbed. It was with him a fixed principle never to disoblige a customer, and he saw that he was disobliging at least half a dozen. On the other hand, he was not prepared to face his wife should he so daringly disregard her wishes as to keep the store open half an hour later than usual. He pondered for a few moments, and then his face suddenly brightened, and he said, "If one of you gentlemen that passes my house on your way home would undertake to put coal on the fire, put the lights out, lock the door, and bring me the key, the store's at your disposal till ten o'clock; and I'm only sorry I can't stay myself."