be rolled tumultuously down the hall and bring up with a deafening crash against an open door. Then the dining-room door into the kitchen would hammer out a thunderous applause, and the jar would go tumbling back again along the hall, to stop with a shivering smash at the open parlor door. So he told it. When we got in the house was quiet and the umbrella-jar stood peacefully erect and whole in its placid niche by the hat-rack.
I do not comprehend such things. I do not understand how hat-racks, and doors, and umbrella-jars, and gas-jets, made out of metals which have been inanimate, as we know animation, for years, can suddenly develop the attributes of life and attain voluntary motion.
I do not like such things as have been happening in our house, and I proposed that we move. Catchings agreed, but Hopkins said wait. He is of an investigating frame of mind, and he was not satisfied. So we waited.
On Tuesday of last week we all got home at the same time and sat down together to our supper. We had been sitting for perhaps fifteen minutes when the noise came. It was the tremendous slamming of the door into the kitchen. Hopkins, who specially desired the investigation, fairly leaped out of his chair. Catchings, who most wanted to avoid it, did not show by the movement of a muscle that he had heard the noise. As for me, I sat still, but that was because I had a reason. For I sat facing the kitchen door, and at the very moment it was slammed I happened to be looking directly at it. It had not moved the smallest fraction of an inch, but the noise it made was like the report of a ducking gun on Great South Bay.
When I said that the door had not moved Hopkins declared that I was cross-eyed and could not see. We examined it and found it solidly locked. Then Hopkins asserted that it was the door from the kitchen into the store-room that had slammed. We examined that. It was shut and locked. To determine accurately whether motion accompanied the noise or not we sealed up the windows and the doors from the storeroom to the dining-room door into the
