were secret means of entering it by night, we resolved, as soon as possible, to look out for another residence, and, in the meantime, to say nothing about the matter to anybody.  About ten days after this determination, my mother, observing one morning that Creswell, when she came to dress her, looked exceedingly pale and ill, inquired if anything was the matter with her?  “Indeed, my lady,” answered she, “we have been frightened to death; and neither I nor Mrs Marsh can sleep again in the room we are now in.”

“Well,” returned my mother, “you shall both come and sleep in the little spare room next us; but what has alarmed you?”

“Someone, my lady, went through our room in the night; we both saw the figure, but we covered our heads with the bed-clothes, and lay in a dreadful fright till morning.”

On hearing this, I could not help laughing, upon which Creswell burst into tears; and seeing how nervous she was, we comforted her by saying we had heard of a good house, and that we should very soon abandon our present habitation.

A few nights afterwards, my mother requested me and Charles to go into her bedroom, and fetch her frame, that she might prepare her work for the next day.  It was after supper; and we were ascending the stairs by the light of a lamp which was always kept burning, when we saw going up before us, a tall, thin figure, with hair flowing down his back, and wearing a loose powdering gown.  We both at once concluded it was my sister Hannah, and called out:  “It won’t do, Hannah! you cannot frighten us!” Upon which the figure turned into a recess in the wall; but as there was nobody there when we passed, we concluded that Hannah had contrived, somehow or other, to slip away and make her escape by the back stairs.  On telling this to my mother, however, she said, “It is very odd, for Hannah went to bed with a headache before you came in from your walk”; and sure enough, on going to her room, there we found her fast asleep; and Alice, who was at work there, assured us that she had been so for more than an hour.  On mentioning this circumstance to Creswell, she turned quite pale, and exclaimed that that was precisely the figure she and Marsh had seen in their bedroom.

About this time my brother Harry came to spend a few days with us, and we gave him a room up another pair of stairs, at the opposite end of the house.  A morning or two after his arrival, when he came down to breakfast, he asked my mother, angrily, whether she thought he went to bed drunk and could not put out his own candle, that she sent those French rascals to watch him.  My mother assured him that she had never thought of doing such a thing; but he persisted in the accusation, adding, “last night I jumped up and opened the door, and by the light of the moon, through the skylight, I saw the fellow in his loose gown at the bottom of the stairs.  If I had not been in my shirt, I would have gone after him, and made him remember coming to watch me.”