moment the hand was quietly
withdrawn.

Search was made in the orchard, but no indications of any person's
having been under the window, beneath which, ranged along the wall,
stood a great column of flower-pots, which it seemed must have prevented
any one's coming within reach of it.

The same night there came a hasty tapping, every now and then, at the
window of the kitchen. The women grew frightened, and the servant-man,
taking firearms with him, opened the back-door, but discovered nothing.
As he shut it, however, he said, 'a thump came on it,' and a pressure as
of somebody striving to force his way in, which frightened _him_; and
though the tapping went on upon the kitchen window panes, he made no
further explorations.

About six o'clock on the Saturday evening following, the cook, 'an
honest, sober woman, now aged nigh sixty years,' being alone in the
kitchen, saw, on looking up, it is supposed, the same fat but
aristocratic-looking hand, laid with its palm against the glass, near
the side of the window, and this time moving slowly up and down, pressed
all the while against the glass, as if feeling carefully for some
inequality in its surface. She cried out, and said something like a
prayer on seeing it. But it was not withdrawn for several seconds after.

After this, for a great many nights, there came at first a low, and
afterwards an angry rapping, as it seemed with a set of clenched
knuckles at the back-door. And the servant-man would not open it, but
called to know who was there; and there came no answer, only a sound as
if the palm of the hand was placed against it, and drawn slowly from
side to side with a sort of soft, groping motion.

All this time, sitting in the back parlour, which, for the time, they
used as a drawing-room, Mr. and Mrs. Prosser were disturbed by rappings
at the window, sometimes very low and furtive, like a clandestine
signal, and at others sudden, and so loud as to threaten the breaking of
the pane.

This was all at the back of the house, which looked upon the orchard as
you know. But on a Tuesday night, at about half-past nine, there came
precisely the same rapping at the hall-door, and went on, to the great
annoyance of the master and terror of his wife, at intervals, for nearly
two hours.

After this, for several days and nights, they had no annoyance
whatsoever, and began to think that nuisance had expended itself. But on
the night of the 13th September, Jane Easterbrook,