master.  On a sudden my vicious kinsman disappeared, and shortly afterward the valet.  But the story runs—­tradition it must still be called—­that the former was robbed, brutally beaten, and finally walled up in some recess by his desperate retainer.  So immured he died of actual starvation; but according to the legend, much of the miser’s wealth continued hidden about the mansion which the Italian’s fears prevented his carrying off, and which still remains, snug and safe, in some dusty repository, ready to reward “a fortunate speculator.”  I only wish,’ continued he merrily, ’I could light upon the hoard!  Give me a clew, dear Newburgh, and I’ll buy you a troop.’

“‘At any rate,’ said I, ’from the mirth with which you treat it, the visitation is not unpleasant.’

“‘You are in error,’ said my entertainer; ’the subject is unquestionably annoying, and one which my mother and the family studiously avoid.  As for your bed-room—­the porch-room—­I am aware that parties occupying it have occasionally heard the strangest noises on the gravel-walk immediately below them.  Your hostess was most averse to those quarters being assigned you; but I thought that the room being large and lofty, and the steps to it few, you would occupy it with comfort.  I am grieved that my arrangement has proved disagreeable.’  And then, finishing off with a hearty laugh, in which, for the life of me I couldn’t join, my host added, ’if he be walled up, I am sure you will say, Newburgh, that he’s a persevering old gentleman, and makes the most laudable efforts to get out of his cell.’”

“The levity of some persons,” was the major’s grave aside, “how inconceivable, how indescribable!”

“My visit,” continued he, “lasted about a fortnight, during the whole of which period, at intervals, the rapping was audible in different parts of the house.  It appeared to me however—­I watched attentively—­to come with the greatest frequency from the hall.  Thence it sounded as if an immense mallet, muffled in feathers or cotton, was striking heavily on the floor.  The noise was generally heard between twelve and two.  The blows sometimes followed each other with great rapidity; at other times more slowly and leisurely.  One singularity of the visitation was this—­that in whatever part of the house you might be listening, the noise seemed to come from a remote direction.  If you heard the blows in the drawing-room, they appeared to be given in the library.  And if you heard them in the library, they seemed to be falling in the nursery.  The invisible workman was busy always at a distance.  Another feature was its locomotive powers.  It moved with the most extraordinary rapidity.  Nothing that I could think of—­mice, rats, drains, currents of air, dropping of water—­would explain it.  If the noise had been caused by the agency of any one of these causes, it would have been heard in the day time. It never was.  Night was the season, and the only season in which the ponderous,