’Will you see it done?’ I said, ‘I will do my best to get it done’; and he said, ‘Do, and I will trouble the house no longer!’ He then walked out of the room and left me. (He seems to have been a very civil spirit, and to have been very careful to affright her as little as possible.) I stepped to the room door, and set up a shout.  The steward and his wife, with the other servants, came to me immediately; all clinging together, with a number of lights in their hands.  It seems they had all been waiting to see the issue of the interview betwixt me and the apparition.  They asked me what was the matter.  I told them the foregoing circumstances, and showed them the box.  The steward durst not meddle with it, but his wife had more courage, and, with the help of the other servants, tugged it out, and found the key.  She said by their lifting it appeared to be pretty heavy, but that she did not see it opened, and therefore did not know what it contained—­perhaps money, or writings of consequence to the family, or both.”  They took it away with them, and she then went to bed and slept peaceably till morning.

It appeared that they sent the box to the Earl in London, with an account of the manner of its discovery, and by whom; as the Earl sent down orders immediately to his steward to inform the poor woman who had been the occasion of its discovery that if she would come and reside in his family she would be comfortably provided for during her remaining days; or, if she did not choose to reside constantly with them, if she would let them know when she wanted assistance, she would be liberally supplied at his lordship’s expense as long as she lived.  And Mr Hampson said it was a known fact in the neighbourhood that she had been supplied from his lordship’s family, from the time the affair was said to have happened, and continued to be so at the time she gave Mr Hampson this account.  She told him that she was so often solicited by curious people to relate the story that she was weary of repeating it; but, to oblige him, she once more related the particulars, wishing now to have done with it.  Mr Hampson said she appeared to be a sensible, intelligent person, and that he saw no reason to doubt her veracity.  I know many persons in the present day laugh at such stories, and affect very much to doubt their reality, while others totally deny the possibility of their existence.  However, Scripture and many well-attested relations seem to favour the idea, and the present story appeared so singular and so well attested, and I had it so near the fountain-head, that I thought it might perhaps be worth preserving, and I have therefore taken pains to record it.  Admitting it to be true, it should seem that the consequence to the family of what the hidden box contained was the formal cause of the spirit’s disquiet, and of its disturbing the house so much and so long, in order to bring about the discovery; but why the departed spirit should concern itself in the affairs of this world after it has left it—­or