Dr. Dirham had been residing within a few doors of Magan's house, and on the death of that gentleman it occurred to him to move to the more ample accommodation it afforded. His account, though wholly unimportant, is curious in its way. For years Miss Magan kept constantly promising to vacate in his favour, stating that some small cottage in some rural spot would be much more suitable to her lonely life; but an irresistible fascination bound her to the dingy rooms in which she had vegetated since the dark days of '98. Francis Magan, by a will of ten lines, had left all his property to Elizabeth, his sister, and directed that his funeral might be private. The rooms were now all shut up, and Miss Magan herself ate, drank, and slept upon the landing. For twenty years the drawing-room had not been opened, owing to the fact that a younger sister had died there; and the other apartments of the house were locked up for reasons equally odd. A strange indisposition to permit the humblest visitor to enter the place, was shown in various ways. A quarter of a century seemed to have elapsed since the dust-pit had been emptied, and boards were erected round it which enabled the Magans to add daily _débris_, until at last they became dust themselves. When Dr. Dirham came into possession of the place[363] he found the garden covered from end to end with some feet deep of cinders, through which rank nettles struggled like the stings of the self-consciousness that made life with Magan the reverse of roseate. In a retired nook stood a bottle drainer, the wooden bars of which had fallen in from decay, smashing in its descent the emblems of conviviality it once enshrined, and through the aid of which profitable secrets may erst have been gained. The sewers and gratings had become choked; and the deep area at the rear of the house was filled with eight feet of stagnant water. A subterranean cell, adjoining this fosse, and by courtesy styled the 'coal-vault,' opened on another dark chamber; and a feeling of awe crept over the Doctor when, impelled by curiosity to gauge its depth, he cast a stone into the pit, and listened until its descent terminated in the sound of splashing water below. The hinges of the hall door were so stiff during Miss Magan's tenancy, that Dr. Fleming, who as a cousin once ventured to visit the moneyed recluse, had to call at a neighbouring chemist's for sweet oil ere he felt safe in crying 'Open Sesame.' Seated on the cold landing, in the midst of chests of mysterious treasure, this 'unprotected female,' trembling in every nerve lest friends should wrest it from her grasp, gloomily passed the closing years of a hidden life. Once, on a false alarm of fire, her anguish was pitiable, and, to the surprise of everybody, she relinquished the custody of some chests to a neighbour,[364] Mr. Cotton, who, however, detained them only a few hours. At another neighbour's, Miss Flanagan's, who kept an