“Do come to us for Easter,” he wrote.  “I am sure this place will interest you—­it is haunted.”

The cunning fellow!  He knew I was very keen on Psychical Research work, and would go almost anywhere on the bare chance of seeing a ghost.

At that time I was quite open-minded, I had arrived at no definite conclusion as to the existence or non-existence of ghosts.  But to tell the truth, I doubted very much if the Colonel’s word, in these circumstances, could be relied upon.  I had grave suspicions that this “haunting” was but an invention for the purpose of getting me to Eastover.  However, as it was just possible that I might be mistaken—­that there really was a ghost, and as I had not seen Colonel Onslow for a long time, and indulged in feelings of the warmest regard both for him and his wife, I resolved to go.

Accordingly I set out early in the afternoon of the Good Friday.  The weather, which had been muggy in London, grew colder and colder the further we advanced along the line, and by the time we reached Eastover there was every prospect of a storm.

As I expected, a closed carriage had been sent to meet me; for the Colonel, carrying conservatism—­with more conservatism than sense, perhaps—­to a fine point, cherished a deep-rooted aversion to innovations of any sort, and consequently abhorred motors.  His house, Eastover Hall, is three miles from the station, and lies at the foot of a steep spine of the Chilterns.

The grounds of Eastover Hall were extensive; but, in the ordinary sense, far from beautiful.  To me, however, they were more than beautiful; there was a grandeur in them—­a grandeur that appealed to me far more than mere beauty—­the grandeur of desolation, the grandeur of the Unknown.  As we passed through the massive iron gates of the lodge, I looked upon countless acres of withered, undulating grass; upon a few rank sedges; upon a score or so of decayed trees; upon a house—­huge, bare, grey and massive; upon bleak walls; upon vacant, eye-like windows; upon crude, scenic inhospitality, the very magnitude of which overpowered me.  I have said it was cold; but there hung over the estate of Eastover an iciness that brought with it a quickening, a sickening of the heart, and a dreariness that, whilst being depressing in the extreme, was, withal, sublime.  Sublime and mysterious; mysterious and insoluble.  A thousand fancies swarmed through my mind; yet I could grapple with none; and I was loth to acknowledge that, although there are combinations of very simple material objects which might have had the power of affecting me thus, yet any attempt to analyse that power was beyond—­far beyond—­my mental capability.

The house, though old—­and its black oak panellings, silent staircases, dark corridors, and general air of gloom were certainly suggestive of ghosts—­did not affect me in the same degree.  The fear it inspired was the ordinary fear inspired by the ordinary superphysical, but the fear I felt in the grounds was a fear created by something out of the way—­something far more bizarre than a mere phantom of the dead.