During the few months that elapsed between the murder of Percy Osmond and the arrival of General St. George in England, Park Newton had been shut up, Pearce, the old family butler, being left as custodian of the house. Of the former establishment he was allowed to retain his niece, Miss Piper, who had been still-room maid, and Finch, formerly a footman, but afterwards promoted to be Mr. Dering\'s body-servant; together with a woman or two to do the rough work of the house.

When the General fixed his home at Park Newton these people were all retained in their places, but their numbers were augmented by eight or ten more. All his life the General had been used to be waited upon by a number of people, and he could not quite get out of the way of it even in England.

On a certain wintry evening early in the new year, Finch and Miss Piper were sitting in the drawing-room toasting their toes before a seasonable fire. Between them was a small table on which stood a decanter of Madeira and two glasses, together with a dish of apples, nuts, and oranges. The family had gone out to dinner, and would not be home till late; Mr. Pearce had driven into Duxley to pay the tradesmen\'s accounts, and for the time being Mr. Finch and his fair companion commanded the situation.

Miss Piper wore a dress of rustling plum-coloured silk. At her elbow was a smelling-bottle and a lace-edged handkerchief. Mr. Finch, with one of General St. George\'s snuffboxes by his side, was lounging in his easy-chair, with all the graceful nonchalance of an old club-man who has just partaken of an excellent dinner.

"This Madeira is not so bad," he said condescendingly, as he swallowed his third glass at a gulp with the gusto of a connoisseur. "Miss Piper," refilling his glass, "I look towards you. Here\'s your very good health. May you live long and die happy."

"Oh, Mr. Finch! deeply gratified, I\'m sure."

"I must have fallen into a doze just now, because I never heard you when you opened the door, and was quite startled when I saw you standing beside me. But then you always do go about the house more quietly than anybody else--except the ghost himself."

Miss Piper glanced round with a shudder, and hitched her chair a little nearer the fire and Mr. Finch. "But surely, Mr. Finch," she said, "you are not one of those who believe that Park Newton is haunted? Uncle Pearce says that he never heard of such rubbish in the whole course of his life."

"Can a man doubt the evidence of his own senses, ma\'am? I have lived in too many good families to have any imagination: I am matter-of-fact to the back-bone. Such being the case, what then? Why simply this, Miss Piper: that I know for a fact this house is haunted. Haven\'t I heard noises myself?"

"Gracious goodness! What kind of noises, Mr. Finch?"

"Why--er--rumblings and grumblings, and--er--moanings and scratchings. And haven\'t I woke up in the middle of the night, and sat up in bed, and listened and heard strange noises that couldn\'t be made by anything mortal? And then in the dusk of evening, haven\'t I seen the curtains move, and heard feet come pitter-pattering down the stairs; and far-away doors clash in the dark as if shut by ghostly hands? Dreadful, I assure you."

"You make me feel quite nervous!" cried Miss Piper, edging an inch nearer.

"The old clock on the second landing has never kept right time since the night of the murder. And didn\'t Mary Ryan swear that she saw Mr. Percy Osmond coming downstairs one evening, in his bloodstained shirt?--asking your pardon, Miss Piper, for mentioning such a garment before a lady. These are facts that can\'t be got over. But there\'s worse to follow."

"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Finch?"

"At first the house was haunted by one ghost, but now they do say there\'s two of them."

"Oh, lor! Two! And whose is the second one?"

"Why, whose ghost should it be but that of our late master, Mr. Lionel Dering? Five servants have left in six weeks, and I shall give warning next Saturday."

"My nerves are turning to jelly," returned Miss Piper. "Oh, Mr. Finch, we should be dull indeed at Park Newton if you were to go away!"

"Then why not go with me and make my life one long happiness? You know my feelings, you know that I----"

"No more of that Mr. Finch, if you please. I know your feelings, and you know my sentiments. Nothing can ever change them. But don\'t let us talk any more nonsense. I want you to tell me about the ghosts."

"I don\'t know that I\'ve much more to tell," said Finch, in a mortified tone.

"But about Mr. Dering--Mr. Lionel, I mean? Which of the servants was it that saw his ghost?"

"I am unable to give you any details, Miss Piper, as I never condescend to listen to the gossip of my inferiors; but I believe it to be the general talk in the servants\' hall that the ghost of Mr. Lionel has been seen three or four times slowly pacing the big corridor by moonlight."

"How were the idiots to know that it was Mr. Lionel Dering?" asked Piper with a toss of the head. "Not one of them ever saw him when he was alive."

"Yes, Jane Minnows saw him in court during the trial, and she knew the ghost the moment she saw it."

"But then Jane Minnows was a terrible storyteller, and just as likely as not to invent all about the ghost simply to get herself talked about. But tell me, Mr. Finch, have you not noticed the remarkable likeness that exists between Mr. Richard Dering and his poor brother?"

"As a gentleman of discernment, Miss Piper, I have noticed the likeness of which you speak. He has the very same nose, the very same hands, the very same way of sitting in his chair. And then the voice! I give you my word of honour that when Mr. Richard yesterday called out rather suddenly \'Finch,\' you might have knocked me down with a cork. It sounded for all the world as if my poor master had come back from the grave, and had called to me just as he used to do."

"You are not one of those, Mr. Finch, who believed in the guilt of Mr. Dering?"

"I never did believe in it and I never will to the last day of my life," said Finch, sturdily. "No one, who knew Mr. Lionel as I knew him, could harbour such a thought for a single moment."

"Uncle Pearce says exactly the same as you. \'No power on earth could make me believe it.\' Them\'s his very words. But I say, Mr. Finch, isn\'t the old General a darling?"

"Yes, Miss Piper, I approve of the General--I approve of him very much indeed. But Mr. Kester St. George is a sort of person whom I would never condescend to engage as my employer. I don\'t like that gentleman. It seems a strange thing to say, but he has never looked his proper self since the night of the murder. His man tells me that he has to drench himself with brandy every morning before he can dress himself. Who knows? Perhaps it\'s the ghosts. They\'re enough to turn any man\'s brain."

"I know that I shouldn\'t like to go after dark anywhere near where the murder was done," said Miss Piper. "It\'s a good job they have nailed the door up. There\'s no getting either in or out of the room now."

"And yet they do say," remarked Finch, "that on the eighth of every month--you know the murder was done on the eighth of May--a little before midnight, footsteps can be heard--the noise of some one walking about in the nailed-up room. You, as the niece of Mr. Pearce, have not been told this, but it has been known to me all along."

"But you don\'t believe it, Mr. Finch?"

"Well, I don\'t know so much about that," answered Finch, dubiously. "You see it was on account of them footsteps that Sims and Baker left last month. They had been told about the footsteps, and they made up their minds to go and hear them. They did hear them, and they gave warning next day. They told Mr. Pearce that the place wasn\'t lively enough for them. But it was the footsteps that drove them away."

"After what you have told me, I shall be frightened of moving out of my own room after dusk. Listen!" cried Miss Piper, jumping up in alarm. "That\'s uncle\'s ring at the side bell. He must have got back before his time."

It was as Finch had stated. Kester St. George was staying as his uncle\'s guest at Park Newton. The General\'s letter found him at Paris, where he had been living of late almost en permanence. It was couched in such a style that he saw clearly if he were to refuse the invitation thus given, a breach would be created between his uncle and himself which might never be healed in time to come; and, distasteful as the idea of visiting Park Newton was to him, he was not the man to let any sentimental rubbish, as he himself would have been the first to call it, stand in the way of any possible advantage that might accrue to him hereafter. Rich though he was, he still hankered after his uncle\'s money-bags almost as keenly as in the days when he was so poor; and in his uncle\'s letter there were one or two sentences which seemed to imply that the probability of their one day becoming his own was by no means so remote as he had at one time deemed it to be.

"And who has so much right to the old boy\'s savings as I have?" he asked himself. "Certainly not that scowling black-browed Richard Dering. I hope with all my heart that he\'ll be gone back to India--or to Jericho--or to the bottom of the sea--before I get to Park Newton."

But when he did reach Park Newton he found, greatly to his disgust, that Richard Dering was still there, and that there were no signs whatever of his speedy departure. That there was no love lost between the two men was evident both to themselves and others; but although their coolness towards each other could hardly fail to be noticed by General St. George, he never made the slightest allusion to it, but treated them both as if they were the best of possible friends. Kester he treated with greater cordiality than he had ever accorded to him before.

Richard and Kester saw hardly anything of each other except at the dinner-table, and then the conversation between them was limited to the baldest possible topics. Richard never sat over his wine, and generally asked and obtained his uncle\'s permission to leave the table the moment dessert was placed upon it. He was an early riser, and had breakfasted and was out riding or walking long before his uncle or cousin made their appearance downstairs.

But these meetings over dinner, brief though they were, were to Kester like a dreadful oft-recurring nightmare which, although it may last for a minute or two only, murders sleep by the dread which it inspires before it comes, and the horror it leaves behind it after it has gone. Richard\'s voice, his eyes, the swing of his walk, the very pose of his head, were all so many reminders to Kester of a dead and gone man, the faintest recollection of whom he would fain have erased not from his own memory alone, but from that of every one else who had known him. But to hear Richard speak was to hear, as it were, Lionel speaking from the tomb.

General St. George made the delicate state of his health a plea for not seeing much company at Park Newton, nor did he visit much himself. But there was no such restriction on Kester, and he was out nearly every day at one place or another, though he generally contrived to get back in time to dine with his uncle. He had not forgotten Dr. Bolus\'s advice, and for the last month or two he had been leading a very quiet life indeed. As a result of this, he fancied that there was a decided improvement in the state of his health. In any case, he felt quite sure that the symptoms which had troubled him so much at one time troubled him less frequently now, and were milder at each recurrence. As a consequence, he had shrunk with a sort of morbid dread from seeking any further professional advice. He always felt the worst in a morning--so weak, nervous, and depressed when he woke up from the three or four hours of troubled sleep, which was all that nature could now be persuaded to give him. Let him tire himself as he might, he never could get much more sleep than when he went to bed comparatively fresh, the consequence simply being that he was more weak and ill than usual next morning. For a little while he tried narcotics; but the remedy proved worse than the disease it was intended to cure. More sleep he got, it is true; but sleep so burdened with frightful dreams that it seemed to him as if it would be better to lie awake for ever, than run the risk of floating helplessly in such a sea of horrors any more.

As Finch had said, he had to dose himself heavily with brandy before he could dress and crawl downstairs to breakfast. But as the day wore on he always got stronger and better, so that by the time it was necessary to dress for dinner, he was quite like his old self again, as well seemingly and as buoyant as the Kester St. George of a dozen years before. It was the dark hours that tried him most, when he was left alone in his great gloomy bedroom, with a candle, and a book, and his own thoughts.

He had brought his valet with him to Park Newton. Not Pierre Janvard this time. Pierre had left Mr. St. George\'s service a little while previously, and had started business on his own account as an hotel keeper at Bath.

Mr. St. George\'s new valet was an Englishman named Dobbs. He was a well-trained servant--noiseless, deferential, smooth-spoken, and treating all his master\'s whims and capricious fluctuations of temper as the merest matter of course: a man who would allow himself to be sworn at, and called an idiot, an ass, the biggest bl............