It was a windy winter, and outside the cedars were muttering I know not what about; but I think that they were Tories of a school long dead, and were troubled about something new.  Within, a great damp log upon the fireplace began to squeak and sing, and struck up a whining tune, and a tall flame stood up over it and beat time, and all the shadows crowded round and began to dance.  In distant corners old masses of darkness sat still like chaperones and never moved.  Over there, in the darkest part of the room, stood a door that was always locked.  It led into the hall, but no one ever used it; near that door something had happened once of which the family are not proud.  We do not speak of it.  There in the firelight stood the venerable forms of the old chairs; the hands that had made their tapestries lay far beneath the soil, the needles with which they wrought were many separate flakes of rust.  No one wove now in that old room—­no one but the assiduous ancient spiders who, watching by the deathbed of the things of yore, worked shrouds to hold their dust.  In shrouds about the cornices already lay the heart of the oak wainscot that the worm had eaten out.

Surely at such an hour, in such a room, a fancy already excited by hunger and strong tea might see the ghosts of former occupants.  I expected nothing less.  The fire flickered and the shadows danced, memories of strange historic things rose vividly in my mind; but midnight chimed solemnly from a seven-foot clock, and nothing happened.  My imagination would not be hurried, and the chill that is with the small hours had come upon me, and I had nearly abandoned myself to sleep, when in the hall adjoining there arose the rustling of silk dresses that I had waited for and expected.  Then there entered two by two the high-born ladies and their gallants of Jacobean times.  They were little more than shadows—­very dignified shadows, and almost indistinct; but you have all read ghost stories before, you have all seen in museums the dresses of those times—­there is little need to describe them; they entered, several of them, and sat down on the old chairs, perhaps a little carelessly considering the value of the tapestries.  Then the rustling of their dresses ceased.

Well—­I had seen ghosts, and was neither frightened nor convinced that ghosts existed.  I was about to get up out of my chair and go to bed, when there came a sound of pattering in the hall, a sound of bare feet coming over the polished floor, and every now and then a foot would slip and I heard claws scratching along the wood as some four-footed thing lost and regained its balance.  I was not frightened, but uneasy.  The pattering came straight towards the room that I was in, then I heard the sniffing of expectant nostrils; perhaps ‘uneasy’ was not the most suitable word to describe my feelings then.  Suddenly a herd of black creatures larger than bloodhounds came galloping in; they had large pendulous ears, their noses were to the ground sniffing, they went up to the lords and ladies of long ago and fawned about them disgustingly.  Their eyes were horribly bright, and ran down to great depths.  When I looked into them I knew suddenly what these creatures were, and I was afraid.  They were the sins, the filthy, immortal sins of those courtly men and women.