And feeling she had by this proposition struck Mr. Craven under the fifth rib, Miss Blake rose to depart. "You will kindly think over what I have said," observed Mr. Craven. "I'll do that if you will kindly think over what I have said," she retorted, with the utmost composure; and then, after a curt good-evening, she passed through the door I held open, nodding to me, as though she would have remarked, "I'm more than a match for your master still, young man." "What a woman that is!" exclaimed Mr. Craven, as I resumed my seat. "Do you think she really means what she says about the fifty pounds?" I inquired. "I do not know," he answered, "but I know I would cheerfully pay that sum to anyone who could unravel the mystery of River Hall." "Are you in earnest, sir?" I asked, in some surprise. "Certainly I am," he replied. "Then let me go and stay at River Hall," I said. "I will undertake to run the ghost to earth for half the money." 7. MY OWN STORY It is necessary now that I should tell the readers something about my own antecedents. Aware of how uninteresting the subject must prove, I shall make that something as short as possible. Already it will have been clearly understood, both from my own hints, and from Miss Blake's far from reticent remarks on my position, that I was a clerk at a salary in Mr. Craven's office. But this had not always been the case. When I went first to Buckingham Street, I was duly articled to Mr. Craven, and my mother and sister, who were of aspiring dispositions, lamented that my choice of a profession had fallen on law rather than soldiering. They would have been proud of a young fellow in uniform; but they did not feel at all elated at the idea of being so closely connected with a "musty attorney." As for my father, he told me to make my own choice, and found the money to enable me to do so. He was an easy-going soul, who was in the miserable position of having a sufficient income to live on without exerting either mind or body; and yet whose income was insufficient to enable him to have superior hobbies, or to gratify any particular taste. We resided in the country, and belonged to the middle class of comfortable, well-to-do English people. In our way, we were somewhat exclusive as to our associates--and as the Hall and Castle residents were, in their way, exclusive also, we lived almost out of society. Indeed, we were very intimate with only one family in our neighbourhood; and I think it was the example of the son of that house which first induced me to think of leading a different existence from that in which my father had grown as green and mossy as a felled tree. Ned Munro, the eldest hope of a proud but reduced stock, elected to study for the medical profession. "The life here," he remarked, vaguely indicating the distant houses occupied by our respective sires, "may suit the old folks, but it does not suit me." And he went out into the wilderness of the world.