Short Fiction

years, and who remembered the town in which we had now taken up our abode, for a very long time, happened to pay us a visit. He good-humouredly pooh-poohed the whole thing; but at the same time was evidently curious about it. “We might construct a sort of story,” said I (I am giving, of course, the substance and purport, not the exact words, of our dialogue), “and assign to each of the three figures who appeared their respective parts in some dreadful tragedy enacted in this house. The male figure represents the murderer; the ill-looking, one-eyed woman his accomplice, who, we will suppose, buried the body where she is now so often seen grubbing in the earth, and where the human teeth and jawbone have so lately been disinterred; and the young woman with dishevelled tresses, and black cloak, and the bloody scar across her throat, their victim. A difficulty, however, which I cannot get over, exists in the cheerfulness, the great publicity, and the evident very recent date of the house.” “Why, as to that,” said he, “the house is not modern; it and those beside it formed an old government store, altered and fitted up recently as you see. I remember it well in my young days, fifty years ago, before the town had grown out in this direction, and a more entirely lonely spot, or one more fitted for the commission of a secret crime, could not have been imagined.”

I have nothing to add, for very soon after this my physician pronounced a longer stay unnecessary for my health, and we took our departure for another place of abode. I may add, that although I have resided for considerable periods in many other houses, I never experienced any annoyances of a similar kind elsewhere; neither have I made (stupid dog! you will say), any inquiries respecting either the antecedents or subsequent history of the house in which we made so disturbed a sojourn. I was content with what I knew, and have here related as clearly as I could, and I think it a very pretty puzzle as it stands.

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[Thus ends the statement, which we abandon to the ingenuity of our readers, having ourselves no satisfactory explanation to suggest; and simply repeating the assurance with which we prefaced it, namely, that we can vouch for the perfect good faith and the accuracy of the narrator.⁠—Editor, Dublin University Magazine.]

My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure

I

Aunt Margaret at Home

My Aunt Margaret was what is termed a clever woman⁠—that is to say, she was keen and resolute, prompt and active, and difficult to overreach in matters of money or business. Of the former she was, people said, a little too fond. At all events she hated waste, and lived frugally on a dietary which leaned much upon tea and eggs, and sometimes omitted dinner altogether. But though light, her housekeeping was neither beggarly nor altogether uncomfortable.

Aunt Margaret, as I remember her⁠—dear me, how many years ago!⁠—was rather tall, if anything, and decidedly slim and erect, with a countenance which, though shrewd and energetic, had yet something kindly in it. Her features were small and nicely turned, and one could quite suppose that she might have been a pretty girl once on a time.

She held herself well, and stepped with a good, firm tread, and lightly withal. Hers was a rustic life, somewhat lonely, in a three-storied house, with three rooms on a floor, and a gable at front⁠—steep-roofed and tiled, and with a great growth of jessamine and woodbine about the porch and the windows. Half a dozen tall, dark elms made a comfortable shadow about the house; and a white paling in front enclosed, by the roadside, the little flower garden, with an old mulberry tree in the centre.

In the rear was a lockup yard with coach-house and stable, and a comfortable room in which old Tom Clinton slept with a blunderbuss and backsword in case of robbers. On weekdays Aunt Margaret dressed very plainly⁠—stuff in winter, cotton in summer; but on Sundays she went to church in thick old satins or ancient brocades, so stiff that the squire’s lady across the aisle used to talk of them covetously for days after, and wonder why such things were not to be had nowadays.

Aunt Margaret was always particularly neat. She used to carry her keys in an old-fashioned way, from a ribbon by her side, a neat little pincushion, her scissors, and I forget what else. It was the tradition of that chatelaine which I saw revived long after poor Aunt Margaret had gone to her rest. She had long and very pretty hands⁠—her years considered; and, in fact, the only thing I remember decidedly against her was her enamelled box of rappee, and the habit to which it ministered.

Her prime-minister was Winnifred Dobbs⁠—fattish, rosy, ancient. Time had thinned her flowing hair, and bleached it somewhat; but she smiled largely, and was good-humoured; although not very quick, was steady and sure, and chatted volubly, though not always much to the purpose; and Aunt Margaret gave her her tea in the drawing-room, which was an excuse for keeping her there for the rest of the evening; and so Aunt Margaret was not quite so lonely as she might have been.

There was a young and stumpy girl beside, who washed, and did nearly everything, and must have found these young days rather dull. To her the view of the road from the kitchen window was a resource, and the occasional calls of the baker, butcher, and dairyman were precious. She talked and laughed with herself; she sang a great deal in the scullery, and joked with the cat in the kitchen.

Among Aunt Margaret’s sources of revenue was her moiety of what she called the Winderbrooke property. Everybody, of course, knows the old town of Winderbrooke. Three houses in the main street belonged to her and her sister. Of these, for convenience, they made a