of—

Emmie laughed, but the laugh was rather a forced one.

“Your sister will never, I hope, echo the peevish complaint of an idle girl, who had not energy enough to nail up her peaches,” observed Captain Arrows. “If Emmie go to Wiltshire, it will be, I trust, to lead there an active, useful, and happy life.”

“I wonder on what course papa will decide,” said Emmie; “we are very anxious to know. A great deal will depend on what Bruce thinks desirable,—papa has such an opinion of the judgment of Bruce.”

“Bruce has a precious good opinion of his own,” said Vibert, with something like scorn.

“For shame!—how can you!” cried Emmie, in a tone of playful reproof.

“Here they are! here come my father and Bruce!” cried Vibert, rising from his easy-chair as he caught sight of two figures at the gate.

Emmie had started up, and was out of the room to receive the travellers, before Vibert had finished the sentence.

CHAPTER II.
COMING TO A DECISION.

“Yes, I am satisfied in regard to educational advantages for my sons,” said Mr. Trevor, in reply to a question asked by the captain, when, a few minutes afterwards, the family were gathered together in the drawing-room. “The tutor, Mr. Blair, appears to be in every way qualified to do full justice to his pupils; I had a very satisfactory interview with him at S——.”

“But Myst Court itself, what do you think of the place?” inquired Vibert.

“The house was originally handsome, but it is now utterly out of repair,” replied Mr. Trevor.

“I don’t suppose that painter or glazier has entered the door for these last fifty years,” observed Bruce.

“The grounds are extensive,” continued Mr. Trevor; “but the trees are choking each other for lack of thinning; and the brushwood, through neglect, has thickened into a jungle.”

“A good cover for rabbits and hares,” observed Vibert, who had an eye to sport.

“I never before saw such wretched cottages,” said Bruce; “and there are sixty-one of them on the estate, besides two farms. The hovels are dotted in groups of threes and fours in every corner where one would not expect to find them. Some lean forward, as if bending under the weight of their roofs; some to one side, as if trying to get away from their neighbours; some cottages look as if they were tired of standing at all. I cannot imagine how the men and women, and swarms of bare-footed children, manage to live in such dirty dens.”

“Is there no one to look after the people?” asked Captain Arrows.

“There is no church or school-house nearer than S——,” replied Mr. Trevor. “The people either work for the neighbouring farmers, or in a dyeing factory which stands about a mile from Myst Court. Wages are low in that part of the country; but that is not sufficient to account for the misery which we saw there. Ignorance prevails—ignorance more dense than I could have believed to have been found in any part of our favoured land. I doubt whether of the peasants one in four is able even to read. As a matter of course, drunkenness and every other vice spread as weeds over a field so neglected.”

“It is there that the labourer is called to lay his hand to the plough,” observed Captain Arrows.

Vibert gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders; Bruce as slight an inclination of his head. A very faint sigh escaped from the lips of Emmie.

“I have been giving the matter serious, very serious thought,” said Mr. Trevor. “My first idea, when I found that my aunt had bequeathed the property to me, was to let Myst Court, and to remain at least for some years in Summer Villa, where we have been for long so comfortably settled. But I found, on visiting Myst Court, that it would be impossible to let the house without effecting such extensive and thorough repairs as I could not at present undertake. Even if this were not so—” Mr. Trevor paused, as if to reflect.

“No mere tenant could be expected to take the same interest in the people as would be felt by you, their landlord and natural protector,” observed the captain, concluding the sentence which his brother-in-law had left unfinished.

“And so you think that we are bound to act as props to the cottages that are leaning forwards or sideways, and make them hold themselves straight, as respectable cottages ought to do!” laughed Vibert.

“But what have you to say about the haunted room?” timidly inquired Emmie, who had been sitting with her hand in that of her father, a hitherto silent but much interested listener to the conversation.

“Haunted! Oh, that’s all nonsense!” exclaimed Bruce. “Myst Court is no more haunted than is Summer Villa; it is simply a big, dreary-looking house that wants new mortar on its walls, new glass to replace what is cracked in its windows, and a good fairy, in the shape of a young lady, to turn it into a cheerful, comfortable home.”

“What gives to Myst Court the name of being haunted,” said his father, “is simply this. My aunt, who was of a nervous and highly sensitive nature, had the misfortune to lose her husband, a short time after their marriage, in a very distressing way. When on his wedding-tour, Mr. Myers was bitten by a mad dog, and a few weeks after bringing his bride to their home he died of hydrophobia.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Emmie.

“Very dreadful indeed,” said her father. “The shock of witnessing Mr. Myers’ sufferings (he died in frantic delirium) almost upset the reason of his unfortunate wife. She fell into a state of morbid melancholy, making an idol of her grief. From the day of her husband’s funeral to that of her own death, a period of fifty years, my poor aunt never once quitted the house, even to attend a place of worship.”

“The most singular and eccentric mark of the widow’s sorrow was her determination that the room in which her husband died should always remain as it was on the day of his burial,” said Bruce. “Aunt Myers had the shutters closed, and the door not only locked, but actually bricked up, so that no foot might ever enter or eye look on the apartment connected in her mind with associations so painful. It is merely that closed-up chamber which gives to the house the name of being haunted.”

“The sooner it is opened to heaven’s light and air the better,” observed Captain Arrows. “Let the first thing done in that house be to unbrick and unlock the door, fling back shutters and throw open windows, and the first time that I visit Myst Court let me sleep in the haunted chamber.”

“I am afraid that I have not the power either to follow your advice or to gratify your wish,” said Mr. Trevor. “My poor aunt, retaining her strange fancy to the last, actually—in a codicil to her will—made as a condition to my possession of the place that the room in which her husband died should remain as it is now, bricked up and unused.”

“That condition would add not a little to the difficulty of letting or