ever
see distinctly, but which they all felt to be indescribably nasty,
rushed up the cellar steps and flew past, as if engaged in a desperate
chase. Indeed, the disturbances were of so constant and harrowing a
nature, that the wing had to be vacated and was eventually locked up.

The Wheelers excavated in different parts of the haunted wing and found,
in the cellar, at a depth of some eight or nine feet, the skeletons of
three men and two women; whilst in the wainscoting of the passage they
discovered the bones of a boy, all of which remains they had properly
interred in the churchyard. According to local tradition, handed down
through many centuries by word of mouth, the house originally belonged
to a knight, who, with his wife, was killed out hunting. He had only one
child, a boy of about ten, who became a ward in chancery. The man
appointed by the Crown as guardian to this child proved an inhuman
monster, and after ill-treating the lad in every conceivable manner,
eventually murdered him and tried to substitute a bastard boy of his own
in his place. For a time the fraud succeeded, but on its being
eventually found out, the murderer and his offspring were both brought
to trial and hanged.

During his occupation of the house, many people were seen to enter the
premises, but never leave them, and the place got the most sinister
reputation. Among other deeds credited to the murderer and his
offspring was the mutilation and boiling of a cat--the particular pet of
the young heir, who was compelled to witness the whole revolting
process. Years later, a subsequent owner of the property had a monument
erected in the churchyard to the memory of this poor, abused child, and
on the front of the house constructed the device of the cat.

Though it is impossible to determine what amount of truth there may be
in this tradition, it certainly seems to accord with the hauntings, and
to supply some sort of explanation to them. The ghostly head on the
banisters might well be that of the low and brutal guardian, whose
spirit would be the exact counterpart of his mind. The figure seen, and
noises heard in the passage, point to the re-enaction of some tragedy,
possibly the murder of the heir, or the slaughter of his cat, in either
of which a bucket might easily have played a grimly significant part.
And if human murderers and their victims have phantasms, why should not
animals have phantasms too? Why should not the phenomenon of the ca