dear old ladies had sat up for me, and I went to bed as soon as possible, in a very comfortable room.  I fell asleep at once, and did not waken till broad daylight, between seven and eight, when, as my eyes wandered about, I saw, by the pictures on the wall, and the names on the books beside my bed, that Miss Patty must have given up her own room to me.  I was quite sorry and, as I dressed, determined to get her to let me change into any den rather than accept this sacrifice.  I went downstairs, and found breakfast ready, but neither Lady Garryowen nor Miss Patty.  Looking out of the window into the garden, I heard, for the only time in my life, the wild Irish keen over the dead, and saw the old nurse wailing and wringing her hands and hurrying to the house.  As soon as she entered she told me, with a burst of grief, and in language I shall not try to imitate, that Miss Patty was dead.

“When I arrived the house was so full that there was literally no room for me.  But ‘Dundellan was never beaten yet,’ the old ladies had said.  There was still the room in the tower.  But this room had such an evil reputation for being ‘haunted’ that the servants could hardly be got to go near it, at least after dark, and the dear old ladies never dreamed of sending any of their guests to pass a bad night in a place with a bad name.  Miss Patty, who had the courage of a Bayard, did not think twice.  She went herself to sleep in the haunted tower, and left her room to me.  And when the old nurse went to call her in the morning, she could not waken Miss Patty.  She was dead.  Heart-disease, they called it.  Of course,” added the Girton girl, “as I said, it was only a coincidence.  But the Irish servants could not be persuaded that Miss Patty had not seen whatever the thing was that they believed to be in the garden tower.  I don’t know what it was.  You see the context was dreadfully vague, a mere fragment.”

There was a little silence after the Girton girl’s story.

“I never heard before in my life,” said the maiden aunt, at last, “of any host or hostess who took the haunted room themselves, when the house happened to be full.  They always send the stranger within their gates to it, and then pretend to be vastly surprised when he does not have a good night.  I had several bad nights myself once.  In Ireland too.”

“Tell us all about it, Judy,” said her brother, the squire.

“No,” murmured the maiden aunt.  “You would only laugh at me.  There was no ghost.  I didn’t hear anything.  I didn’t see anything.  I didn’t even smell anything, as they do in that horrid book, ‘The Haunted Hotel.’”

“Then why had you such bad nights?”

“Oh, I felt” said the maiden aunt, with a little shudder.

“What did you feel, Aunt Judy?”