lent as to interfere with conversation. The earliest
written notice of this circumstance, so far as can be discovered, is
the following entry in Lord Bute's journal for January 17, 1896:--

"I hear that the morning the late S---- of B---- left home for the
last time, spirits came and rapped to him in his room--doubtless to
warn him--so that his death was really owing to the cruel superstition
which had prevented him allowing them to be communicated with."

Lord Bute's informant appears to have been the Rev. Sir David Hunter
Blair, as the journal mentions his arrival at Falkland on that day,
and none of the other guests in the house were people who were likely
to have heard anything about it.

Mr. S---- was succeeded by his eldest son, Captain S----, who showed
no hesitation in throwing the house into the public market, with its
4400 acres of shooting. The alleged haunting was not mentioned
beforehand to the first tenant, as it afterwards was to Colonel
Taylor.

This tenant was Mr. J.R. H---- of K---- Court, C----, in G----shire,
and the following is the account of experiences during his visit, as
given by his butler:--

ON THE TRAIL OF A GHOST

_To the Editor of "The Times"_

"SIR,--In your issue of the 8th, under the above heading, 'A
Correspondent' tries at some length to describe what he calls a most
impudent imposture. I having lived at B---- for three months in the
autumn of last year as butler to the house, I thought perhaps my
experience of the ghost of B---- might be of interest to many of your
readers, and as the story has now become public property, I shall not
be doing any one an injury by telling what I know of the mystery.

"On July 15, 1896, I was sent by Mr. H----, with two maidservants, to
take charge of B---- from Mr. S----'s agents. I was there three days
before the arrival of any one of the family, and during that time I
heard nothing to disturb me in any way; but on the morning after the
arrival of two of the family, Master and Miss H----, they came down
with long faces, giving accounts of ghostly noises they had heard
during the night, but I tried to dissuade them from such nonsense, as
I then considered it to be; but on the following two or three nights
the same kind of noises were heard by them, and also by the
maidservants, who slept in the rooms above, and they all became
positively frightened. I heard nothing whatever, though the noises, as
they described them, would have been enoug