rapidly round, but instead of the usual points of a compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by astrologers to denote the planets.  A very peculiar, but not strong nor displeasing odour, came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood that we afterwards discovered to be hazel.  Whatever the cause of this odour, it produced a material effect on the nerves.  We all felt it, even the two workmen who were in the room—­a creeping tingling sensation from the tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair.  Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed the saucer.  As I did so the needle of the compass went round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor.  The liquid was spilt—­the saucer was broken—­the compass rolled to the end of the room—­and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant had swayed and rocked them.

The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which we had descended from the trap-door; but seeing that nothing more happened, they were easily induced to return.

Meanwhile I had opened the tablet:  it was bound in a plain red leather, with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on that sheet were inscribed, within a double pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:—­“On all that it can reach within these walls—­sentient or inanimate, living or dead—­as moves the needle, so work my will!  Accursed be the house, and restless be the dwellers therein.”

We found no more.  Mr J——­ burnt the tablet and its anathema.  He razed to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room with the chamber over it.  He had then the courage to inhabit the house himself for a month, and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not be found in all London.  Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no complaints.

But my story is not yet done.  A few days after Mr J——­ had removed into the house, I paid him a visit.  We were standing by the open window and conversing.  A van containing some articles of furniture which he was moving from his former house was at the door.  I had just urged on him my theory that all those phenomena regarded as supermundane had emanated from a human brain; adducing the charm, or rather curse, we had found and destroyed in support of my philosophy.  Mr J——­ was observing in reply, “That even if mesmerism, or whatever analogous power it might be called, could really thus work in the absence of the operator, and produce effects so extraordinary, still could those effects continue when the operator himself was dead? and if the spell had been wrought, and, indeed, the room walled up, more than seventy years ago, the probability was, that the operator had long since departed this life”; Mr J——­, I say, was thus answering, when I caught hold of his arm and pointed to the street below.