“’For three weeks I experienced no inconvenience from the lady, but one night, just before we were about to leave, I had sat up very late.  It was just one o’clock when I retired to my bedroom, a very beautiful moonlight night.  I locked my door, and saw that the shutters were properly fastened, as I did every night.  I had not lain myself down more than about five minutes before something jumped on the bed making a growling noise; the bed-clothes were pulled off though I strongly resisted the pull.  I immediately sprang out of bed, lighted my candle, looked into the closet and under the bed, but saw nothing.’

“Mr. Dale goes on to say that he endeavoured to account for it in some such way as I had formerly done, having never up to that time heard one word of the lady and her doings in that room.  He adds, ’I did not see the lady or hear any noise but the growling.’

“Here then is the written testimony of a beneficed English clergyman, occupying the responsible position of tutor to the young Marquis of Ely, a most sober-minded and unimpressionable man.  He repeats in 1867 almost the very words of my father when detailing his experience in that room in 1790—­a man of whose existence he had never been cognisant, and therefore utterly ignorant of Miss Tottenham’s doings in that room nearly eighty years before.

“In the autumn of 1868 I was again in the locality, at Dunmore, on the opposite side of the Waterford Estuary.  I went across to see the old place and what alterations Miss Tottenham had forced the proprietors to make in the tapestry chamber.  I found that the closet into which the poor lady had always vanished was taken away, the room enlarged, and two additional windows put in:  the old tapestry had gone and a billiard-table occupied the site of poor Anne’s bed.  I took the old housekeeper aside, and asked her to tell me how Miss Tottenham bore these changes in her apartment.  She looked quite frightened and most anxious to avoid the question, but at length hurriedly replied, ’Oh, Master George! don’t talk about her:  last night she made a horrid noise knocking the billiard-balls about!’

“I have thus traced with strict accuracy this most real and true tale, from the days of ‘Tottenham and his Boots’ to those of his great-great-grandson.  Loftus Hall has since been wholly rebuilt, but I have not heard whether poor Anne Tottenham has condescended to visit it, or is wholly banished at last.”

CHAPTER X

MISTAKEN IDENTITY—­CONCLUSION

We have given various instances of ghostly phenomena wherein the witnesses have failed at first to realise that what they saw partook in any way of the abnormal.  There are also many cases where a so-called ghost has turned out to be something very ordinary.  Though more often than not such incidents are of a very trivial or self-explanatory nature (e.g. where a sheep in a churchyard almost paralysed a midnight wayfarer till he summoned up courage to investigate), there are many which have an interest of their own and which often throw into prominence the extraordinary superstitions and beliefs which exist in a country.