“I know you will laugh,” said the maiden aunt, abruptly entering on her nervous narrative.  “I felt all the time as if somebody was looking through the window.  Now, you know, there couldn’t be anybody.  It was in an Irish country house where I had just arrived, and my room was on the second floor.  The window was old-fashioned and narrow, with a deep recess.  As soon as I went to bed, my dears, I felt that some one was looking through the window, and meant to come in.  I got up, and bolted the window, though I knew it was impossible for anybody to climb up there, and I drew the curtains, but I could not fall asleep.  If ever I began to dose, I would waken with a start, and turn and look in the direction of the window.  I did not sleep all night, and next night, though I was dreadfully tired, it was just the same thing.  So I had to take my hostess into my confidence, though it was extremely disagreeable, my dears, to seem so foolish.  I only told her that I thought the air, or something, must disagree with me, for I could not sleep.  Then, as some one was leaving the house that day, she implored me to try another room, where I slept beautifully, and afterwards had a very pleasant visit.  But, the day I went away, my hostess asked me if I had been kept awake by anything in particular, for instance, by a feeling that some one was trying to come in at the window.  Well, I admitted that I had a nervous feeling of that sort, and she said that she was very sorry, and that every one who lay in the room had exactly the same sensation.  She supposed they must all have heard the history of the room, in childhood, and forgotten that they had heard it, and then been consciously reminded of it by reflex action.  It seems, my dears, that that is the new scientific way of explaining all these things, presentiments and dreams and wraiths, and all that sort of thing.  We have seen them before, and remember them without being aware of it.  So I said I’d never heard the history of the room; but she said I must have, and so must all the people who felt as if some one was coming in by the window.  And I said that it was rather a curious thing they should all forget they knew it, and all be reminded of it without being aware of it, and that, if she did not mind, I’d like to be reminded of it again.  So she said that these objections had all been replied to (just as clergymen always say in sermons), and then she told me the history of the room.  It only came to this, that, three generations before, the family butler (whom every one had always thought a most steady, respectable man), dressed himself up like a ghost, or like his notion of a ghost, and got a ladder, and came in by the window to steal the diamonds of the lady of the house, and he frightened her to death, poor woman!  That was all.  But, ever since, people who sleep in the room don’t sleep, so to speak, and keep thinking that some one is coming in by the casement.  That’s all; and I told you it was not an interesting story, but perhaps you will find more interest in the scientific explanation of all these things.”