I determined to accept the invitation; for respecting the nature of Moris Klaw’s business at Friars House--and that he had some other motive than ordinary in sojourning there I was persuaded--my curiosity knew no bounds. Accordingly, I packed my grip, and at about five o’clock on a delightful afternoon found myself taking tea in a cloister-like apartment of the former Friary. “Grange,” said Sir James, in answer to a question of mine, “is shut up.” “It is shut, yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “What a pity! What a pity!” In the course of the day occurred incidents which I have since perceived to have been significant. I will pass over them, however, and hasten to what I may term the catastrophe of this very singular case. Four of us sat down to dinner in an apartment which clearly had been the ancient refectory of the monks. Clement Leyland, who had arrived barely in time to dress, looked haggard and worried. I determined that he had some private troubles of his own, and beneath his quiet geniality I thought I could detect a sort of brooding gloom. His pale, clean-shaven face, so like yet so unlike that of his cousin, was a mask that ill repaid study; yet I knew that the real Clement Leyland was a stranger to me, perhaps to all of us. I was most anxious to learn if Moris Klaw had divulged the secret of the hidden chamber at Grange to Sir James; and I was unspeakably curious concerning the box of which I had had but a glimpse--the box that he had found there. But he baffled my curiosity at every point. Have you experienced that sense of impending calamity which sometimes heralds tragic things? It was with me that night, throughout dinner; and afterward, when we entered the library and sat over our cigars, it grew portentously. I felt that I stood upon the brink of a precipice. And literally I was not in great error. Moris Klaw, to the evident discomfort of Sir James, brought the conversation around to the subject of the haunting. I observed him to glance at his watch, with a rather odd expression upon his vellum-hued face. “Is it not singular,” he said, “how poor spectres are confined, like linnets, to their cages? They seem, these spooks, never to roam. That laughing demon of Grange--look at him. He remains in that empty, desolate house; he----” There was a dreadful interruption. Commencing with a sort of guttural rattle, out upon the cloisteresque stillness burst a peal of wicked laughter. It rang throughout the room; it poured fear into my every fibre. It died away--and was gone. Sir James, clutching the leather-covered chair-arms, looked like a man of stone. I was frankly terrorized. Moris Klaw stood behind me, by a bookcase, him I could not see. But Clement Leyland’s face I can never forget. It was positively deathlike. His eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and his teeth chattered horribly. “God in Heaven!” he whispered, brokenly. “What is it? O God! What is it! Take it away--take it away!” Then Moris Klaw spoke, slowly: