It was on this occasion that the Doctor discovered, with some degree of malicious pleasure, that the hospitable roof which protected him and the manuscript from the blast and storm stood over an acknowledged haunted house. There were strange creakings in the old building. Spirits were frequently seen, and the accounts only differed as to whether there was a man in a gray cowl, a child in a white shirt, or a cat as large as an ass. Every one knew that there was in all parts a knocking, rattling, thundering, and invisible throwing of stones. Sometimes all the authority of the Proprietor and his daughter was necessary to prevent the outbreak of a panic among the servants. Even our friends, in the quiet of the hight, heard unaccountable sounds, groans, thundering noises, and startling knocks on the wall. These annoyances of the house the Doctor explained to the satisfaction of the Proprietor by his theory of the old walls. He made it clear that many generations of weasels, rats, and mice had bored through the solid walls and tunnelled out a system of covered passages and strongholds. Consequently, every social amusement and every domestic disturbance which took place among the inmates of the wall was plainly perceptible. But the Doctor listened with secret vexation to the muffled noises of the denizens of the wall. For if they rushed and bustled thus indiscriminately around the manuscript, they threatened to render difficult the future investigations of science. Whenever he heard a violent gnawing he could not help thinking they were again eating away a line of the manuscript, which would make a multitude of conjectures necessary; and it was not by gnawing alone that this colony of mice would disfigure the manuscript that lay underneath them.