This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every night at ten o’clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water.  That the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles’s way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering.  Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars.  An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.

“And so,” continued my sister, “I exempt Bottles.  And considering, John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and willing—­form a Society here for three months—­wait upon ourselves and one another—­live cheerfully and socially—­and see what happens.”

I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardor.

We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the haunted house.

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone.  It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat.  I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun?  On his saying, “Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her,” I begged the favor of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.

“She’s a true one, sir,” said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago.  “No mistake about her, sir.”

“Ikey,” said I, “don’t mention it; I have seen something in this house.”

“No, sir?” he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. “’Ooded lady, sir?”

“Don’t be frightened,” said I.  “It was a figure rather like you.”

“Lord, sir?”

“Ikey!” said I, shaking hands with him warmly, I may say affectionately; “if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure.  And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!”