On telling this to my mother, however, she said, "It is
very odd, for Hannah went to bed with a headache before you came in from
your walk"; and sure enough, on going to her room, there we found her
fast asleep; and Alice, who was at work there, assured us that she had
been so for more than an hour. On mentioning this circumstance to
Creswell, she turned quite pale, and exclaimed that that was precisely
the figure she and Marsh had seen in their bedroom.

About this time my brother Harry came to spend a few days with us, and
we gave him a room up another pair of stairs, at the opposite end of the
house. A morning or two after his arrival, when he came down to
breakfast, he asked my mother, angrily, whether she thought he went to
bed drunk and could not put out his own candle, that she sent those
French rascals to watch him. My mother assured him that she had never
thought of doing such a thing; but he persisted in the accusation,
adding, "last night I jumped up and opened the door, and by the light of
the moon, through the skylight, I saw the fellow in his loose gown at
the bottom of the stairs. If I had not been in my shirt, I would have
gone after him, and made him remember coming to watch me."

We were now preparing to quit the house, having secured another,
belonging to a gentleman who was going to spend some time in Italy; but
a few days before our removal, it happened that a Mr and Mrs Atkyns,
some English friends of ours, called, to whom we mentioned these strange
circumstances, observing how extremely unpleasant it was to live in a
house that somebody found means of getting into, though how they
contrived it we could not discover, nor what their motive could be,
except it was to frighten us; observing that nobody could sleep in the
room Marsh and Creswell had been obliged to give up. Upon this, Mrs
Atkyns laughed heartily, and said that she should like, of all things,
to sleep there, if my mother would allow her, adding that, with her
little terrier, she should not be afraid of any ghost that ever
appeared. As my mother had, of course, no objection to this fancy of
hers, Mrs Atkyns requested her husband to ride home with the groom, in
order that the latter might bring her night-things before the gates of
the town were shut, as they were then residing a little way in the
country. Mr Atkyns smiled, and said she was very bold; but he made no
difficulties, and sent the things, and his wife retired with her dog to