plate, wine, food, and very little fuel or oil.  Candles and bread and milk and a tin of meat had been got for us in the village.  We ate and went to bed.  The room was so cold that we had to cover our faces, and we had no bed-linen.  We had been very busy all day in Edinburgh, and soon fell asleep.

February 4th, Thursday.—­I awoke suddenly, just before 3 A.M.  Miss Moore, who had been lying awake over two hours, said, “I want you to stay awake and listen.”  Almost immediately I was startled by a loud clanging sound, which seemed to resound through the house.  The mental image it brought to my mind was as of a long metal bar, such as I have seen near iron-foundries, being struck at intervals with a wooden mallet.  The noise was distinctly as of metal struck with wood; it seemed to come diagonally across the house.  It sounded so loud, though distant, that the idea that any inmate of the house should not hear it seems ludicrous.  It was repeated with varying degrees of intensity at frequent intervals during the next two hours, sometimes in single blows, sometimes double, sometimes treble, latterly continuous.  We did not get up, though not alarmed.  We had been very seriously cautioned as to the possibilities of practical joking; and as we were alone on that floor in a large house, of which we did not even know the geography, we thought it wiser to await developments.  We knew the servants’ staircase was distant, though not exactly where.

About 4.30 we heard voices, apparently in the maid’s room, undoubtedly on the same floor.  We had for some time heard the housemaids overhead coughing, occasionally speaking, and we thought they had got up and had come down to her room.

   After five o’clock the noises seemed to have ceased, and Miss
   Moore fell asleep.  About 5.30 I heard them again, apparently
   more distant.  I continued awake, but heard no more.

About 8 A.M. the maid brought us some tea.  She said she had slept very badly, had worried over our apparent restlessness, as she had heard voices and footsteps and the sound of things dragged about, but that the maids had not been downstairs.  We had never risen, and had spoken seldom, and in low tones, and an empty room (the dressing-room) intervened between Mac.’s room and ours.

In order, as we supposed, to follow up the noises we, later, in the day moved our rooms to the other side of the house, especially choosing those from which the sounds seemed to proceed—­Nos. 6 and 7—­leaving Mac., the maid, in No. 3.

The whole day has been occupied with exploring the house, sending for food and supplies, trying to thaw the rooms, moving furniture to make things homelike, and trying to arrive at a little comfort.

The house will soon be very pleasant, and only needs living in, but it feels like a vault.  It is very roomy and very light.  Nothing less