“I think, my dear,” said the Golden Dustman, “I’ll at once get rid of Wegg for the night, because he’s coming to inhabit the Bower, and it might be put into his head or somebody else’s, if he heard this and it got about that the house is haunted. Whereas we know better. Don’t we?”

“I never had the feeling in the house before,” said Mrs. Boffin; “and I have been about it alone at all hours of the night. I have been in the house when death was in it, and I have been in the house when murder was a new part of its adventures, and I never had a fright in it yet.”

“And won’t again, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin. “Depend upon it, it comes of thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.”

“Yes; but why didn’t it come before?” asked Mrs. Boffin.