“Well, that is what I’m coming to.  That, so to say, is just it.  The woman not only had the rooms swept and dusted, and my meals prepared to the moment.  In a hundred odd little ways this orderliness, these preparations, seemed to read my desires.  Did I wish the roses renewed in a bowl upon the dining-table, sure enough at the next meal they would be replaced by fresh ones.  Mrs. Carkeek (I told myself) must have surprised and interpreted a glance of mine.  And yet I could not remember having glanced at the bowl in her presence.  And how on earth had she guessed the very roses, the very shapes and colours I had lightly wished for?  This is only an instance, you understand.  Every day, and from morning to night, I happened on others, each slight enough, but all together bearing witness to a ministering intelligence as subtle as it was untiring.

“I am a light sleeper, as you know, with an uncomfortable knack of waking with the sun and roaming early.  No matter how early I rose at Tresillack, Mrs. Carkeek seemed to have prevented me.  Finally I had to conclude that she arose and dusted and tidied as soon as she judged me safely a-bed.  For once, finding the drawing-room (where I had been sitting late) ‘redded up’ at four in the morning, and no trace of a plate of raspberries which I had carried thither after dinner and left overnight, I determined to test her, and walked through to the kitchen, calling her by name.  I found the kitchen as clean as a pin, and the fire laid, but no trace of Mrs. Carkeek.  I walked upstairs and knocked at her door.  At the second knock a sleepy voice cried out, and presently the good woman stood before me in her nightgown, looking (I thought) very badly scared.

“‘No,’ I said, ’it’s not a burglar.  But I’ve found out what I wanted, that you do your morning’s work over night.  But you mustn’t wait for me when I choose to sit up.  And now go back to your bed like a good soul, whilst I take a run down to the beach.’

“She stood blinking in the dawn.  Her face was still white.

“‘Oh, miss,’ she gasped, ‘I made sure you must have seen something!’

“‘And so I have,’ I answered, ‘but it was neither burglars nor ghosts.’

“‘Thank God!’ I heard her say as she turned her back to me in her grey bedroom—­which faced the north.  And I took this for a carelessly pious expression and ran downstairs, thinking no more of it.

“A few days later I began to understand.

“The plan of Tresillack house (I must explain) was simplicity itself.  To the left of the hall as you entered was the dining-room; to the right the drawing-room, with a boudoir beyond.  The foot of the stairs faced the front door, and beside it, passing a glazed inner door, you found two others right and left, the left opening on the kitchen, the right on a passage which ran by a store-cupboard under the bend of the stairs to a neat pantry with the usual shelves and linen-press, and under the window (which faced north) a porcelain basin and brass tap.  On the first morning of my tenancy I had visited this pantry and turned the tap; but no water ran.  I supposed this to be accidental.  Mrs. Carkeek had to wash up glass ware and crockery, and no doubt Mrs. Carkeek would complain of any failure in the water supply.