‘Put the bug in the fire, sir, and rinsed out the tumbler ever so many times, marm.’

‘Where is that tumbler?’ cried Anna. ‘I hope you scratched it—marked it some way. I’ll never drink out of that tumbler; never put it before me, Biddy. A bug—a bug! Oh, Julia! Oh, mamma! I feel it crawling all over me, even now. Haunted table!’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Julia.

‘My daughters,’ said their mother, with authority in her eyes, ‘go to your chamber till you can behave more like reasonable creatures. Is it a bug—a bug that can frighten you out of what little wits you ever had? Leave the room. I am astonished. I am pained by such childish conduct.’

‘Now tell me,’ said she, addressing me, as soon as they had withdrawn, ‘now tell me truly, did a bug really come out of this crack in the table?’

‘Wife, it is even so.’

‘Did you see it come out?’

‘I did.’

She looked earnestly at the crack, leaning over it.

‘Are you sure?’ said she, looking up, but still bent over.

‘Sure, sure.’

She was silent. I began to think that the mystery of the thing began to tell even upon her. Yes, thought I, I shall presently see my wife shaking and shuddering, and, who knows, calling in some old dominie to exorcise the table, and drive out the spirits.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said she suddenly, and not without excitement.

‘What, wife?’ said I, all eagerness, expecting some mystical proposition; ‘what, wife?’

‘We will rub this table all over with that celebrated roach powder I’ve heard of.’

‘Good gracious! Then you don’t think it’s spirits?’

‘Spirits?’

The emphasis of scornful incredulity was worthy of Democritus himself.

‘But this ticking—this ticking?’ said I.

‘I’ll whip that out of it.’

‘Come, come, wife,’ said I, ‘you are going too far the other way, now. Neither roach powder nor whipping will cure this table. It’s a queer table, wife; there’s no blinking it.’

‘I’ll have it rubbed, though,’ she replied, ‘well rubbed;’ and calling Biddy, she bade her get wax and brush, and give the table a vigorous manipulation. That done, the cloth was again laid, and we sat down to our morning meal; but my daughters did not make their appearance. Julia and Anna took no breakfast that day.

When the cloth was removed, in a businesslike way my wife went to work with a dark-coloured cement and hermetically closed the little hole in the table.