then and turned him adrift.  One day there was a great commotion in the neighbourhood, the Government troops were hunting the place in search of rebels, and who should come galloping up the avenue with a couple of troopers in hot pursuit but Mr. Horace.  The noise brought out Sir Algernon, and he was so infuriated to think that his son was the cause of the disturbance, a “disgraceful young cub,” he called him, that despite Mr. Horace’s entreaties for protection, he ran him through with his sword.  It was a dreadful thing for a father to do, and Sir Algernon bitterly repented it.  His wife, who had been devoted to Mr. Horace, left him, and at last, in a fit of despondency, he hanged himself—­out there, on one of the elms lining the avenue.  It is still standing.  Ever since then they do say that the wood is haunted, and that before the death of any member of the family Mr. Horace is seen galloping along the old carriage drive.’

“‘Pleasant,’ I grunted.  ‘And how about the house—­is it haunted too?’

“‘I daresn’t say,’ she murmured.  ’Some will tell you it is, and some will tell you it isn’t.’

“‘In which category are you included?’ I asked.

“‘Well!’ she said ’I have lived here happy and comfortable forty-five years the day after to-morrow, and that speaks for itself, don’t it?’ And with that she hobbled off and showed me the way to the dining-room.

“What a house it was!  From the hall proceeded doorways and passages, more than the ordinary memory could retain.  Of these portals, one at each end conducted to the tower stairs, others, to the reception-rooms and domestic offices.  In the right wing, besides bedrooms galore, was a lofty and spacious picture gallery; in the left—­a chapel; for the Wimpoles were, formerly, Roman Catholics.  The general fittings and furniture, both of the hall and house in general, were substantial, venerable and strongly corroborative of what Mrs. Grimstone hinted at—­they suggested ghosts.

“The walls, lined with black oak panels, or dark hangings that fluttered mysteriously each time the wind blew, were funereal indeed; and so high and narrow were the windows, that little was to be discerned through them but cross-barred portions of the sky.  One spot in particular appealed to my nerves—­and that, a long, vaulted stone passage leading from a morning room to the foot of the back staircase.  Here the voice and even the footsteps echoed with a hollow, low response, and often when I have been hurrying along it—­I never dared walk slowly—­I have fancied—­and maybe it was more than fancy—­I have been pursued.