“My bed was alongside the south wall of my room, and parallel to the corridor or passage, my head towards No. 5, and my feet towards No. 3.

“As often happened at B——­, I awoke from a sound slumber, not by degrees, but in a moment.  There was no transition—­no half-awakening, but full and complete consciousness all at once.  I struck a light, looked at my watch, found it was 4.30, and went to sleep again immediately.  I then wakened slowly and gradually, hearing more and more clearly a noise which appeared to me to be the cause of my awakening.  The noise was the kind of sound which is produced by a person walking rapidly with one foot longer than the other—­i.e., it was a succession of beats in rapid sequence, each alternate beat being louder than the one immediately before it.

“It appeared to me (1) to be produced outside my room; (2) to be on a higher level; and (3) to be moving in the direction of my bed—­i.e., going as from No. 5 past No. 4, in which I was, towards No. 3.  I at once jumped out of bed, opened my door and looked out.  I saw nothing, and the noise stopped.  I then struck a light, and found that it was only 4.45.  I lay awake till I heard the servants obviously moving about, and then went to sleep again.  At breakfast I asked, ’Has anybody ever heard this kind of noise?’ reproducing it as well as I could by a series of thumps on the table.  ‘Oh yes,’ was the answer, ’that is what we call the ‘limping’ or ‘scuttering’ noise.  Of course I had heard the phrases used, but thought they referred to two separate noises.  I had also formed quite distinct ideas as to the kind of noises these epithets were intended to describe—­both entirely different from the kind of noise I had heard—­and I showed what I meant.  ‘Oh no,’ said Miss Freer, ’what you heard is what we have been calling indiscriminately the limping or scuttering noise, and we have not heard the kinds of noise these words suggested to you.’  I emphasise this as showing clearly that I cannot have been expecting to hear the particular noise in question.

“The next thing was to account for the noise, if possible, and we spent some time experimenting.  First of all the servants were interrogated as to whether any of them had been moving about at 4.45.  Answer, ‘No.’  Next we asked who got up first.  This was a maid who slept in X, and went into Y to call the kitchenmaid, who slept there.  To do so she had, of course, to go through the narrow room which was over part of my bedroom.

“This, she said, was a good bit later than 4.45.  But we thought it well to make her go from X to Y while I lay down on my bed and listened.  We made her walk backwards and forwards, both with her slippers on and also in her stocking soles.  I and some of the others who came into my room heard her quite distinctly.  But (1) the noise of her steps was in a different place—­near my window, and exactly in the line of her progress; (2) it was an