“When next I did so, it was early one June morning—­between five and six, and none of the family, saving my father, who was out in the fields looking after his men, were as yet up.  I explored the dreaded corridor and staircase, and was crossing the floor of one of the rooms I had hitherto regarded as immune from ghostly influences, when there was an icy rush of wind, the door behind me slammed to violently, and a heavy object struck me with great force in the hollow of my back.  With a cry of surprise and agony I turned sharply round, and there, lying on the floor, stretched out in the last convulsions of death, was the big black cat, maimed and bleeding as it had been on the previous occasion.  How I got out of the room I don’t recollect.  I was too horror-stricken to know exactly what I was doing, but I distinctly remember that, as I tugged the door open, there was a low, gleeful chuckle, and something slipped by me and disappeared in the direction of the corridor.  At noon that day my mother had a seizure of apoplexy, and died at midnight.

“Again there was a lapse of years—­this time nearly four—­when, sent on an errand for my father, I turned the key of one of the doors leading into the empty wing, and once again found myself within the haunted precincts.  All was just as it had been on the occasion of my last visit—­gloom, stillness and cobwebs reigned everywhere, whilst permeating the atmosphere was a feeling of intense sadness and depression.

“I did what was required of me as quickly as possible, and was crossing one of the rooms to make my exit, when a dark shadow fell athwart the threshold of the door, and I saw the cat.

* * * * *

“That evening my father dropped dead as he was hastening home through the fields.  He had long suffered from heart disease.

“After his death we—­that is to say, my brother, sisters and self—­were obliged to leave the house and go out into the world to earn our living.  We never went there again, and never heard if any of the subsequent tenants experienced similar manifestations.”

This is as nearly as I can recollect Mrs. Hartnoll’s story.  But as it is a good many years since I heard it, there is just a possibility of some of the details—­the smaller ones at all events—­having escaped my memory.

When I was grown up, I stayed for a few weeks near Oxenby, and met, at a garden party, a Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, the then occupants of the Manor House.

I asked if they believed in ghosts, and told them I had always heard their house was haunted.

“Well,” they said, “we never believed in ghosts till we came to Oxenby, but we have seen and heard such strange things since we have been in the Manor House that we are now prepared to believe anything.”