February 28th, Sunday.—­All slept well.  I assisted Miss Langton with some Ouija experiments in the presence of, first, Mr.  “Endell,” then Mr. MacP——­, then of Colonel C——­ and Miss “N.”

March 1st, Monday.—­Mr. MacP——­ reported at breakfast that he had awakened at 5.45, and almost immediately heard a loud clanging sound in the north-west corner of his room; he was fully awake, struck a light, saw nothing, and looked at his watch.  We tried later to reproduce this noise, which he described as resembling a loud blow upon a washhand basin.  I shut myself into No. 1, and found this a fair, but too faint, imitation of the sounds Miss Moore and I had heard there.

   Colonel C——­ and Mr. MacP——­ left.

Miss M——­ and the Colonel have to-day had some talk with ——­ [who had an intimate knowledge of the S——­ family.  See under dates Feb. 9th and 20th].  She repeated her former story of the Major’s promised “return,” especially a statement made to an old woman who worked in the garden, who had told him that at least “he’d no get in there, she’d keep the gate locked,” that he “would come in below the deck” (cf. p. 114).  He was described as a short, broad man, with white hair and beard, “a’ful fond o’ dogs (of which he had many), and so noisy with them in the morning, that when he and his housekeeper-body let them out, his voice could be heard on the hill.”  She also said that on Major S——­’s return from India to assume the property he found a tenant in possession, and had built himself a small house beyond the grounds, which he afterwards let with the shooting.  In the late Mr. S——­’s time this house was used as a retreat during the summer for nuns (a statement which interests us greatly, as affording a possible clue to the apparition).

The Major was greatly attached to the place, and had a great dislike to the presence of strangers in it, or to its going out of the old name.  The estate, we hear, was much encumbered when he succeeded to it, but he cleared off all debts in a few years, and appears to have lived a somewhat eccentric and recluse life, in the society of his dogs and dependants.

This is the first mention of the fact that nuns had ever lived at B——.  Miss Freer had not been aware that the object of the Rev. P. H——­’s visit in 1892 had been to give what is called a Spiritual Retreat to those who had been occupying the cottage.  It is only fair to suggest that the phantasmal nun, to whom the name Ishbel had been given, may really have been the phantasm of one of these visitors, and that the dress of at least some of them was identical with or closely resembled hers, while it was totally unlike that worn by the community to which the late Mother Frances Helen belonged.  At the same time, Ishbel’s dress was of a kind so very common among nuns, that it would have been that with which she would, most naturally, have been clothed by the imagination