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Entering Manston's empty bedroom, with her hands on her hips, she indifferently cast her eyes upon the bed, previously to disht in an inattentive manner, 'What a remarkably quiet sleeper Mr Manstonback, certainly, but the bed was scarcely disarranged 'Anybody would alht, 'that he had hts vanished as they had coed off the counterpane, blankets and sheets, and stooped to lift the pillows Thus stooping, so arrested her attention; she looked closely--more closely--very closely 'Well, to be sure!' was all she could say The clerk's wife stood as if the air had suddenly set to amber, and held her fixed like a fly in it

The object of her wonder was a trailing brown hair, very little less than a yard long, which proved it clearly to be a hair from some woman's head She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the ; there holding it out she looked fixedly at it, and becaaze, which had at first actively settled on the hair, involuntarily dropped past its object by degrees and was lost on the floor, as the inner vision obscured the outer one

She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound it round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in her pocket Mrs Crickett's thoughts ith her work no

She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found

She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house, fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign

Coerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own

Hastily coeain, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat, an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique diseases and afflictions

Mrs Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned and wandered after it like a cat's

'What is it?' said Mrs Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been an unht to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli

'You shall hear,' said Mrs Crickett, co up the treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then soleether with the accident of its discovery