knives, plate, wine, food, and
very little fuel or oil. Candles and bread and milk and a tin of
meat had been got for us in the village. We ate and went to bed.
The room was so cold that we had to cover our faces, and we had
no bed-linen. We had been very busy all day in Edinburgh, and
soon fell asleep.

_February 4th, Thursday._--I awoke suddenly, just before 3 A.M.
Miss Moore, who had been lying awake over two hours, said, "I
want you to stay awake and listen." Almost immediately I was
startled by a loud clanging sound, which seemed to resound
through the house. The mental image it brought to my mind was as
of a long metal bar, such as I have seen near iron-foundries,
being struck at intervals with a wooden mallet. The noise was
distinctly as of metal struck with wood; it seemed to come
diagonally across the house. It sounded so loud, though distant,
that the idea that any inmate of the house should not hear it
seems ludicrous. It was repeated with varying degrees of
intensity at frequent intervals during the next two hours,
sometimes in single blows, sometimes double, sometimes treble,
latterly continuous. We did not get up, though not alarmed. We
had been very seriously cautioned as to the possibilities of
practical joking; and as we were alone on that floor in a large
house, of which we did not even know the geography, we thought
it wiser to await developments. We knew the servants' staircase
was distant, though not exactly where.

About 4.30 we heard voices, apparently in the maid's room,
undoubtedly on the same floor. We had for some time heard the
housemaids overhead coughing, occasionally speaking, and we
thought they had got up and had come down to her room.

After five o'clock the noises seemed to have ceased, and Miss
Moore fell asleep. About 5.30 I heard them again, apparently
more distant. I continued awake, but heard no more.

About 8 A.M. the maid brought us some tea. She said she had
slept very badly, had worried over our apparent restlessness, as
she had heard voices and footsteps and the sound of things
dragged about, but that the maids had not been downstairs. We
had never risen, and had spoken seldom, and in low tones, and an
empty room (the dressing-room) intervened between Mac.'s room
and ours.

In order, as we supposed, to follow up the noises we, later, in
the day moved