ces as of speaking or reading several
times when sleeping in No. 1, but had assumed that they were
normal. As a matter of fact, Miss Moore goes straight to her
dressing-room on going upstairs, and I am always too tired to
read or speak. No two persons sleep in any other room.

We tested this by getting Colonel Taylor to shut himself into
No. 1 while I, in No. 8, read aloud at the top of my voice, Miss
Langton remaining in the room with me. The Colonel could hear no
sound less than direct banging on the wall with a poker.

The cook has been talking to-day of the various noises heard at
night; she is not nervous, nor are the maids, but all speak of
voices and bangs for which they cannot account; except the
butler, who has heard nothing, but is obviously impressed with
his wife's experience last night. Her story is that, not feeling
well, she went up to bed early, before the servants' supper, the
rest of the household being as usual in the drawing-room. While
in bed, before ten o'clock, she distinctly heard the sound of
voices talking, apparently below, but not far distant (her room
is over No. 7, at present empty). She "wondered if it could be
the servants in the servants' hall at supper"--an obvious
impossibility, as their room is _not_ underneath, is two storeys
away, and has no connection with the upper part of the house.
She also heard bangs on the wall, behind her bed and to the
side; there was no furniture there to crack, and it was mostly
on the _outside_ wall, so she finally became uncomfortable, and
buried her head in the clothes to deaden the sound. She "doesn't
believe in ghosts," but thinks the house "very queer," and says
that far and wide in the country round it is spoken of as
"haunted," though no one seems to know of any story, as to the
cause, except that, very improbable, about the murder of a
priest by the wife of a former proprietor. It appears that a
maid engaged in the village refused to sleep in the house,
because when in service here once before she had been frightened
by bangs at the door of her bedroom (in a room over No. 1); she
had also heard the sounds of a rustling silk dress on the
back-stairs, and had seen the bedroom door pushed open and a
lady come in.... A maid, who came after this one had left, told
the cook that she believed there was a story of a "priest
murdered somewh