There, in its old position, looking gloomy and mysterious in the shadows of night, I found it on my return to town; and, as if tired of playing tricks with one who had become indifferent to their vagaries, all the doors remained precisely as I had left them; and if there were ghosts in the house that night, they did not interfere with me or the chamber I occupied. Next morning, while I was dressing, a most remarkable thing occurred; a thing for which I was in no wise prepared. Spirits, and sights and sounds supposed appropriate to spirithood, I had expected; but for a modest knock at the front door I was not prepared. When, after hurriedly completing my toilet, I undrew the bolts and undid the chain, and opened the door wide, there came rushing into the house a keen easterly wind, behind which I beheld a sad-faced woman, dressed in black, who dropped me a curtsey, and said: "If you please, sir--I suppose you are the gentleman?" Now, I could make nothing out of this, so I asked her to be good enough to explain. Then it all came out: "Did I want a person to char?" This was remarkable--very. Her question amazed me to such an extent that I had to ask her in, and request her to seat herself on one of the hall chairs, and go upstairs myself, and think the matter over before I answered her. It had been so impressed upon me that no one in the neighbourhood would come near River Hall, that I should as soon have thought of Victoria by the grace of God paying me a friendly visit, as of being waited on by a charwoman. I went downstairs again. At sight of me my new acquaintance rose from her seat, and began curling up the corner of her apron. "Do you know," I said, "that this house bears the reputation of being haunted?" "I have heard people say it is, sir," she answered. "And do you know that servants will not stay in it--that tenants will not occupy it?" "I have heard so, sir," she answered once again. "Then what do you mean by offering to come?" I inquired. She looked up into my face, and I saw the tears come softly stealing into her eyes, and her mouth began to pucker, ere, drooping her head, she replied: "Sir, just three months ago, come the twentieth, I was a happy woman. I had a good husband and a tidy home. There was not a lady in the land I would have changed places with. But that night, my man, coming home in a fog, fell into the river and was drowned. It was a week before they found him, and all the time--while I had been hoping to hear his step every minute in the day--I was a widow." "Poor soul!" I said, involuntarily. "Well, sir, when a man goes, all goes. I have done my best, but still I have not been able to feed my children--his children--properly, and the sight of their poor pinched faces breaks my heart, it do, sir," and she burst out sobbing. "And so, I suppose," I remarked, "you thought you would face this house rather than poverty?"