the same impression of distance.  I heard it, at intervals, during half-an-hour.  Miss Moore is a very light sleeper, but she did not awake.  At six I got up and went through my room to the dressing-room door (No. 6), after a sound that seemed especially near.  It was so near, that though I thought it quite unlikely under the circumstances, I wanted to satisfy myself that no one was playing jokes on Mr. C——­, whose room was close by.  The house was deadly still.  I could hear the clocks ticking on the stairs.  As I stood, the sound came again.  It might have been caused by a very heavy fall of snow from a high roof—­not sliding, but percussive.  Miss Moore had wakened up and heard it too.

   (N.B.—­We afterwards found that, as the roof is flat, the snow
   is cleared away daily.)

Mr. W——­, an utter sceptic, he declares, left early; then we all went for a walk.  We spent the whole afternoon making experiments.  Miss Moore or my maid or I, as having heard the noises, shut ourselves up in the room whence they were heard, or stood in the right places on hall or staircase.

   The experimental noises made were as follows:—­

1.  Banging with poker or shovel as hard as possible on every part of the big iron stove in the hall; kicking it, hitting it with sticks (as Miss Moore and I persisted that the first noise was as of metal on wood, or vice versa).

   2.  Trampling and banging in every part of the house, obvious and
   obscure, in cupboards and cistern holes.

3. (On the hypothesis of tricks from outside.) Beating on outside doors with shovels and pokers and wooden things, on the walls and windows accessible; banging and clattering in outside coal-cellars and in the sunk area round the house. (N.B.—­Beating on the front door handle with a wooden racket, was right in kind, but not nearly enough in degree.)

Miss Moore, who was familiar with the noise, did it rather well by going into a coal-cellar (always locked at night, however) outside and throwing big lumps of coal, from a distance, into a big pail, but it wasn’t nearly loud enough.

4.  Finally the men climbed on to the roof, outside, while Miss Moore and I shut ourselves into the proper places.  They clattered and walked and stamped and kicked and struck the slates, but they couldn’t make noise enough.

Then we had in the gardener they saw yesterday, and put him in the butler’s room, and the four men made hideous rows as before.  He was grateful and respectful, but contemptuous. They couldn’t make noise enough.

We went out at dusk, having sent Mr. MacP——­ and Mr. C——­ to pay a visit (as they had not been told of the brook scene), intending that the same trio as before should go to the copse.  Mr. L——­ F——­ couldn’t come, and as Mr. F——­ and I went on alone, we met