might be serviceable, too, against impostors; at all events,
seeming, as I have said, very much interested and puzzled, he advised
it, and it was tried. We fancied that it was successful; for there was
an interval of quiet for, I think, three or four nights. But after that,
the noises--the footsteps on the lobby--the knocking at the door, and
the turning of the handle recommenced in full force, notwithstanding the
light upon the table outside; and these particular phenomena became only
more perplexing than ever.

The alarm of robbers and smugglers gradually subsided after a week or
two; but we were again to hear news from the nursery. Our second little
girl, then between seven and eight years of age, saw in the night
time--she alone being awake--a young woman, with black, or very dark
hair, which hung loose, and with a black cloak on, standing near the
middle of the floor, opposite the hearthstone, and fronting the foot of
her bed. She appeared quite unobservant of the children and nurse
sleeping in the room. She was very pale, and looked, the child said,
both "sorry and frightened," and with something very peculiar and
terrible about her eyes, which made the child conclude that she was
dead. She was looking, not at, but in the direction of the child's bed,
and there was a dark streak across her throat, like a scar with blood
upon it. This figure was not motionless; but once or twice turned
slowly, and without appearing to be conscious of the presence of the
child, or the other occupants of the room, like a person in vacancy or
abstraction. There was on this occasion a night-light burning in the
chamber; and the child saw, or thought she saw, all these particulars
with the most perfect distinctness. She got her head under the
bed-clothes; and although a good many years have passed since then, she
cannot recall the spectacle without feelings of peculiar horror.

One day, when the children were playing in the back garden, I asked them
to point out to me the spot where they were accustomed to see the woman
who occasionally showed herself as I have described, near the stable
wall. There was no division of opinion as to this precise point, which
they indicated in the most distinct and confident way. I suggested that,
perhaps, something might be hidden there in the ground; and advised them
digging a hole there with their little spades, to try for it.
Accordingly, to work they went, and by my return in the evening they had
g