‘Don’t exasperate me,’ I cried, now truly beside myself; ‘I will quit the house!’

‘No, no! not in that state. Come to bed, my dear. I won’t say another word.’

The next morning, upon waking, my wife said nothing about the past night’s affair, and, feeling no little embarrassment myself, especially at having been thrown into such a panic, I also was silent. Consequently, my wife must still have ascribed my singular conduct to a mind disordered, not by ghosts, but by punch. For my own part as I lay in bed watching the sun in the panes, I began to think that much midnight reading of Cotton Mather was not good for man; that it had a morbid influence upon the nerves, and gave rise to hallucinations. I resolved to put Cotton Mather permanently aside. That done, I had no fear of any return of the ticking. Indeed, I began to think that what seemed the ticking in the room, was nothing but a sort of buzzing in my ear.

As is her wont, my wife having preceded me in rising, I made a deliberate and agreeable toilet. Aware that most disorders of the mind have their origin in the state of the body, I made vigorous use of the flesh-brush, and bathed my head with New England rum, a specific once recommended to me as good for buzzing in the ear. Wrapped in my dressing-gown, with cravat nicely adjusted and fingernails neatly trimmed, I complacently descended to the little cedar-parlour to breakfast.

What was my amazement to find my wife on her knees, rummaging about the carpet nigh the little apple- tree table, on which the morning meal was laid, while my daughters, Julia and Anna, were running about the apartment distracted.

‘Oh, papa, papa!’ cried Julia, hurrying up to me, ‘I knew it would be so. The table, the table!’

‘Spirits! spirits!’ cried Anna, standing far away from it, with pointed finger.

‘Silence!’ cried my wife. ‘How can I hear it, if you make such a noise? Be still. Come here, husband, was this the ticking you spoke of? Why don’t you move? Was this it? Here, kneel down and listen to it. Tick, tick, tick!—don’t you hear it now?’

‘I do, I do,’ cried I, while my daughters besought us both to come away from the spot.

Tick, tick, tick!

Right from under the snowy cloth, and the cheerful urn, and the smoking milk-toast, the unaccountable ticking was heard.

‘Ain’t there a fire in the next room, Julia?’ said I. ‘Let us breakfast there, my dear,’ turning to my wife—‘let us go—leave the table—tell Biddy to remove the things.’

And so saying, I was moving towards the door in high self-possession, when my wife interrupted me.

‘Before I quit this room, I will see into this ticking,’ she said with energy. ‘It is something that can be found out, depend upon it. I don’t believe in spirits, especially at breakfast-time. Biddy! Biddy! Here, carry these things back to the kitchen,’ handing the urn. Then, sweeping off the cloth, the little table lay bare to the eye.

‘It’s the table, the table!’ cried Julia.

‘Nonsense,’ said my wife. ‘Who ever heard of a ticking table? It’s on the floor. Biddy! Julia! Anna! move everything out of the room—table and all. Where are the tack-hammers?’

‘Heavens, mamma—you are not going to take up the carpet?’ screamed Julia.

‘Here’s the hammers, marm,’ said Biddy, advancing tremblingly.