next the window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an easy or even a safe one.  After the horse was got out of the stable and led away, the question arose, What had frightened him?  Could the man they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify him?  Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water, and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in that spot was deep, though not very wide.  Strange to say, the horse could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door, though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.

Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of one of his brothers.  He had not occupied it long before he began to complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling down stairs and took refuge in his mother’s room, terrified by something horrible—­what, he could not define, but something that came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers.  Thinking that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers, and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants.  But in a very short time the complaints were renewed:  the girl could not sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her shrieking and half awakened from her bed.  So the lady had the room dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.

As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family induced Mrs. X——­’s father to purchase a house in town, and he accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a clergyman and his wife.  The new residents had not been long installed when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest.  I believe that nothing more was ever seen, but the kitchen at night, when all the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging furniture.  If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair remaining in its accustomed place.  Then, too, the footsteps of the invisible intruder were heard again, and often while the minister was writing in his study the steps would be heard coming through the door and across the room, and the unseen visitor would seat himself in the chair that usually stood opposite to that of the clergyman at the writing-table, when a sound as of the pages of a large book with stiff paper leaves being slowly turned would usually ensue.  The minister often addressed his invisible companion, but never received any reply to his questions or his appeals.