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“Then,” said Perkins, with a shiver, “let’s go to bed.”

The two men retired, Dawson to the room directly over the parlor, Perkins to the apartment back of it. For company they left the gas burning, and in a short time were fast asleep. An hour later Dawson awakened with a start. Two things oppressed him to the very core of his being. First, the gas was out; and second, Perkins had unmistakably groaned.

He leaped from his bed and hastened into the next room.

“Perkins,” he cried, “are you ill?”

“Is that you, Dawson?” came a voice from the darkness.

“Yes. Did–did you put out the gas?”

“No.”

“Are you ill?”

“No; but I’m deuced uncomfortable What’s this mattress stuffed with– needles?”

“Needles? No. It’s a hair mattress. Isn’t it all right?”

“Not by a great deal. I feel as if I had been sleeping on a porcupine. Light up the gas and let’s see what the trouble is.”

Dawson did as he was told, wondering meanwhile why the gas had gone out. No one had turned it out, and yet the key was unmistakably turned; and, what was worse, on ripping open Perkins’s mattress, a most disquieting state of affairs was disclosed.

Every single hair in it was standing on end!

A half-hour later four figures were to be seen wending their way northward through the darkness–two men, a huge mastiff, and a Chinaman. The group was made up of Dawson, his guest, his servant, and his dog. Dampmere was impossible; there was no train until morning, but not one of them was willing to remain a moment longer at Dampmere, and so they had to walk.

“What do you suppose it was?” asked Perkins, as they left the third mile behind them.

“I don’t know,” said Dawson; “but it must be something terrible. I don’t mind a ghost that will make the hair of living beings stand on end, but a nameless invisible something that affects a mattress that way has a terrible potency that I have no desire to combat. It’s a mystery, and, as a rule, I like mysteries, but the mystery of Dampmere I’d rather let alone.”

“Don’t say a word about the–ah–the mattress, Charlie,” said Perkins, after awhile. “The fellows’ll never believe it.”

“No. I was thinking that very same thing,” said Dawson.

And they were both true to Dawson’s resolve, which is possibly why the mystery of Dampmere has never been solved.

If any of my readers can furnish a solution, I wish they would do so, for I am very much interested in the case, and I truly hate to leave a story of this kind in so unsatisfactory a condition.

A ghost story without any solution strikes me as being about as useful as a house without a roof.