I hope you will be able to tell me something about this sudden sickness, for Mike is as stupid as a stone post, and knows nothing at all." "Now, Miss Panney," said Phoebe, speaking very earnestly, but in a low voice, "I can't say that I can really give you the true head and tail of it, for it's mighty hard to find out what did happen to that young gal.
All I know is that she didn't come down to breakfast, and that Mr.
Haverley went up to her room hisself, and he knocked and he knocked, and then he pushed the door open and went in, and, bless my soul, Miss Panney, she wasn't there.

Then he hollered, and me and him, we sarched and sarched the house.

He went up into the garret by hisself, for you may be sure I wouldn't go there, but he was just wild, and didn't care where he went, and there he found her dead asleep on the floor, and a livin' skeleton a sittin' watchin' her." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Panney; "he never told you that." "That's the pint of what I got out of him, and you know, Miss Panney, that that garret's hanted." Miss Panney wasted no words in attempting to disprove this assertion.
"He found her asleep on the floor ?" said she.
"Yes, Miss Panney," answered Phoebe, "dead asleep, or more likely, to my mind, in a dead faint, among all the drafts and chills of that garret, and in her stockin' feet.

She had tuk up a candle with her, but I'spect the skeleton blowed it out.

And now she's got an awful cold, so she can scarcely breathe, and a fever hot enough to roast an egg." At this moment Ralph appeared in the hall.