And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun
peering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on its
floors, the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced
the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passed
in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half a
minute within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I heard
the footfall before me; and when I opened the street door, I thought I
could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my own home, expecting to
find my runaway servant there; but he had not presented himself, nor
did I hear more of him for three days, when I received a letter from
him, dated from Liverpool to this effect:--

"HONORED SIR,--I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely
hope that you will think that I deserve it, unless--which Heaven
forbid!--you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I can
recover myself; and as to being fit for service, it is out of the
question. I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. The
ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I do
nothing now but start and tremble, and fancy IT is behind me. I humbly
beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages are due
to me, to be sent to my mother's, at Walworth,--John knows her
address." The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and
explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer's
charge. This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man
wished to go to Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently
mixed up with the events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of
that conjecture; rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many
persons the most probable solution of improbable occurrences. My
belief in my own theory remained unshaken. I returned in the evening
to the house, to bring away in a hack cab the things I had left there,
with my poor dog's body. In this task I was not disturbed, nor did any
incident worth note befall me, except that still, on ascending and
descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in advance. On
leaving the house, I went to Mr. J----'s. He was at home. I returned
him the keys, told him that my curiosity was sufficiently gratified,
and was about to relate quickly what had passed, when he stopped me,
and said, though with much politeness, that he had no longer any
interest in a mystery which none had ever solved. I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read, as
well as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared; and
I then inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who
had died in the house, and if there were anything in her early history
which could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters
gave rise. Mr. J---- seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments,
answered, "I am but little acquainted with the woman's earlier
history, except as I before told you, that her family were known to
mine. But you revive some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will
make inquiries, and inform you of their result. Still, even if we
could admit the popular superstition that a person who had been either
the perpetrator or the victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, as
a restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes had been committed,
I should observe that the house was infested by strange sights and
sounds before the old woman died--you smile--what would you say?" "I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom
of these mysteries, we should find a living human agency." "What! you believe it is all an imposture? For what object?" "Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I
were to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but
in that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could
not pretend to when awake,--tell you what money you had in your
pocket, nay, describe your very thoughts,--it is not necessarily an
imposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be,
unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me
from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me by
previous _rapport_." "But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you
suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects: move
chairs,--open and shut doors?" "Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects,--we never
having been _en rapport_ with the person acting on us? No. What is
commonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power
akin to mesmerism, and superior to it,--the power that in the old days
was called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate
objects of matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be against
Nature,--it would be only a rare power in Nature which might be given
to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by
practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extend
over the dead,--that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the
dead may still retain,--and compel, not that which ought properly to
be called the SOUL, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a
phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itself
apparent to our senses, is a very ancient though obsolete theory upon
which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would
be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment
which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of
the 'Curiosities of Literature' cites as credible: A flower perishes;
you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived
are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor
re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burned dust of
that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in
life. It may be the same with the human being. The soul has as much
escaped you as the essence or elements of the flower. Still you may
make a spectrum of it. And this phantom, though in the popular
superstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must not be
confounded with the true soul; it is but the eidolon of the dead form. Hence, like the best attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing
that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul,--that
is, of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for
little or no object,--they seldom speak when they do come; if they
speak, they utter no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth. American spirit-seers have published volumes of communications, in
prose and verse, which they assert to be given in the names of the
most illustrious dead: Shakespeare, Bacon,--Heaven knows whom.