reticent.  The haunted chamber, for instance—­which, of course, existed at the Grange—­she treated with the greatest contempt.  Various friends and relations had slept in it at different times, and no approach to any kind of authenticated ghost-story, even of the most trivial description, had they been able to supply.  Its only claim to respect, indeed, was that it contained the famous Mervyn cabinet, a fascinating puzzle of which I will speak later, but which certainly had nothing haunting or horrible about its appearance.

My uncle’s family consisted of three sons.  The eldest, George, the present baronet, was now in his thirties, married, and with children of his own.  The second, Jack, was the black-sheep of the family.  He had been in the Guards, but, about five years back, had got into some very disgraceful scrape, and had been obliged to leave the country.  The sorrow and the shame of this had killed his unhappy mother, and her husband had not long afterwards followed her to the grave.  Alan, the youngest son, probably because he was the nearest to us in age, had been our special favorite in earlier years.  George was grown up before I had well left the nursery, and his hot, quick temper had always kept us youngsters somewhat in awe of him.  Jack was four years older than Alan, and, besides, his profession had, in a way, cut his boyhood short.  When my uncle and aunt were abroad, as they frequently were for months together on account of her health, it was Alan, chiefly, who had to spend his holidays with us, both as school-boy and as undergraduate.  And a brighter, sweeter-tempered comrade, or one possessed of more diversified talents for the invention of games or the telling of stories, it would have been difficult to find.

For five years together now our ancient custom of an annual visit to Mervyn had been broken.  First there had been the seclusion of mourning for my aunt, and a year later for my uncle; then George and his wife, Lucy,—­she was a connection of our own on our mother’s side, and very intimate with us all,—­had been away for nearly two years on a voyage round the world; and since then sickness in our own family had kept us in our turn a good deal abroad.  So that I had not seen my cousins since all the calamities which had befallen them in the interval, and as I steamed northwards I wondered a good deal as to the changes I should find.  I was to have come out that year in London, but ill-health had prevented me; and as a sort of consolation Lucy had kindly asked me to spend a fortnight at Mervyn, and be present at a shooting-party, which was to assemble there in the first week of October.