Something was wrong with the lock and the door would not
stay fastened, as I have said. Something that was not fear thrilled their hearts as they pushed the
door further ajar, and stood where they could see every foot of the
vacant floor. One of their own boxes stood in the middle of the room,
but aside from that, nothing was to be seen, and they looked at one
another in silence. “Hold the lamp a minute, Maggie,” David said, at last, and then he went
all over the room, and looked more particularly at its emptiness, and
even felt the walls. “Secret panels, you know,” he said, with a smile, but it was a very
puzzled smile indeed. “I can’t see what it could have been,” Margaret said, as they went down
the stairs. “No, I can’t see, either, but I’m going to see,” said David. “That was a
chain, and chains don’t drag around by themselves, you know. A ghost
could not drag a chain, if he were to try.”

“The conventional ghost very often drags chains,” said Margaret, as she
closed the door of her room. And then she lay awake all night and listened for the conventional ghost
that dragged a chain, but it seemed that the weight of the chain must
have wearied him, for he was not heard again. The mother had slept through it all, and next morning they gave her a
vivid account of the night’s adventure. “Perhaps it was someone in the house,” she said, in alarm. There were no
ghosts within the bounds of possibility, so far as she was concerned,
but burglars were very possible, indeed. Then Margaret and David both laughed more than ever. “What fun it would be,” said David, “for a burglar to get into this
house and try to find something worth carrying away!”

So they went on to the next night, all three fully determined to spend
the night in listening for the ghost, and running him to earth if
possible. But it was Margaret that heard the ghost, after all. She had been
sleeping and was suddenly startled wide awake, and there, overhead, was
the sound of the chain dragging; and just as she was on the point of
springing out of bed to call her brother, the chain seemed to go out of
the upper room. She lay still and listened, and in a moment she heard it
again. It was coming down the stairs. There was no carpet on the stairs, and she could hear the chain drop
from step to step, until it had come the whole way down. There it was,
almost at the door of her room, and something that was strangely like
fear kept her lying still, listening in horrified silence. Then it went along the hall, dragging close to the door; and then
further away; and back and forth for awhile; and then it began dragging
back up the stairs again. Step by step she could hear it drawn over the
edge of every step--and by the time it had reached the top she
remembered herself and called David. Again did the brother and sister make a tour of the upper room, with the
lamp. Not only that, but they looked into every nook and corner of the
upper part of the house, and at last came back, baffled. They had seen
nothing extraordinary, and they had not heard a sound. “I’m going to see that ghost to-night,” David said to his sister the
next evening. “How?”

“I’m going to sit up all night at the head of the stairs. Don’t say
anything about it to mother; it might make her uneasy.”

So, after the household were all quiet, David slipped into his place at
the head of the stairs, and sat down to his vigil. He had placed a
screen at the head of the stairway so that it hid him from view--as if a
ghost cared for a screen--and he established himself behind it, and
prepared to be as patient as he could. It seemed to him that hours so long had never been devised as those the
town clocks tolled off that night. He bore it until midnight moderately
well, because, he argued with himself, if there were any ghosts about
they would surely walk then; but they were not in a humor for walking;
and still the hours rolled on without any developments. He took the
fidgets, and had nervous twitches all over him, and at last he could
endure it no longer, and had leaned his head back against the wall and
was going blissfully to sleep when----

He heard a chain dragging just beyond the open door of that unused room. In spite of himself a shiver ran down his back. There was no mistaking
it; it was a real chain, if he had ever heard one. More than that, it
had left the room, and was coming straight towards the stairs. The hall
was dark, and it was impossible for him to see anything, although he
strained his eyes in the direction of the sound. And even while he
looked it had passed behind the screen, and was going down the stairs,
dropping from step to step with a clank. Half way down a narrow strip of moonlight from a stair-window lay
directly across the steps. Whatever the thing was, it must pass through
that patch of light, and David leaned forward and watched. Down it went from step to step, and presently it had slipped through the
light, and was down; and a little later it came back again, through the
light, and up the stairs, and back into that unused room. And then David slapped his knees jubilantly, and ran down to his room,
and slept all the rest of the night. Next morning he was very mysterious about his discoveries of the night
before. “Oh, yes, I saw the ghost,” he said to Maggie. “There; don’t ask so many
questions; I’ll tell you more about it to-morrow, maybe.”

And that was all the information she could get from him. It was very
provoking. That day David made a purchase down town and brought home a bulky
bundle, which he hid in his own room and would not let his sister even
peep at. “I’m going to try to catch a ghost to-night,” he said, “and you know how
it is; if I brag too much beforehand, I shall be sure to fail.”

He was working with something in the hall after the others had retired;
but he did not sit up this time. He went to bed, and Margaret listened
at his door and found that he was soon asleep. But away in the night they were all awakened by a squealing that brought
them all into the hall in a great hurry; and there, at the head of the
stairs, they found the huge rat-trap that David had set a few hours
before, and in the midst of the toils was a rat. “Why, David,” exclaimed the mother, “I didn’t know that there was a rat
in the house.”

And then, all at once, she saw that there was a long chain hanging from
a little iron collar around the creature’s neck, and she and Margaret
cried together. “And this was the ghost!”

Such a funny ghost when they came to think of it--this poor rat, with a
nest in some hole of the broken chimney. He had been someone’s pet,
once, perhaps; and now, the households he had broken up, the nights he
had disturbed, the wild sensations he had created--it made his captors
laugh to think that this innocent creature had been the cause of the
whole trouble. “I’ll get a cage for him, and take care of him for the rest of his
life,” said David.