ry, 1897, Lieutenant
Carr Glyn, of the Grenadiers, while reading in the outer room of the
Queen's Library in Windsor, saw a lady in black in a kind of mantilla
of black lace pass from the inner room into a corner where she was
lost to view. He supposed that she had gone out by a door there, and
asked an attendant later who she was. There was no door round the
corner, and, in the opinion of some, the lady was Queen Elizabeth!
She has a traditional habit, it seems, of haunting the Library. But
surely, of all people, in dress and aspect Queen Elizabeth is most
easily recognised. The seer did not recognise her, and she was
probably a mere casual hallucination. In old houses such traditions
are common, but vague. In this connection Glamis is usually
mentioned. Every one has heard of the Secret Chamber, with its
mystery, and the story was known to Scott, who introduces it in The
Betrothed. But we know when the Secret Chamber was built (under the
Restoration), who built it, what he paid the masons, and where it is:
under the Charter Room. {201} These cold facts rather take the
"weird" effect off the Glamis legend.

The usual process is, given an old house, first a noise, then a
hallucination, actual or pretended, then a myth to account for the
hallucination. There is a castle on the border which has at least
seven or eight distinct ghosts. One is the famous Radiant Boy. He
has been evicted by turning his tapestried chamber into the smoking-
room. For many years not one ghost has been seen except the lady with
the candle, viewed by myself, but, being ignorant of the story, I
thought she was one of the maids. Perhaps she was, but she went into
an empty set of rooms, and did not come out again. Footsteps are apt
to approach the doors of these rooms in mirk midnight, the door handle
turns, and that is all.

So much for supposed hauntings by spirits of the dead.

At the opposite pole are hauntings by agencies whom nobody supposes to
be ghosts of inmates of the house. The following is an extreme
example, as the haunter proceeded to arson. This is not so very
unusual, and, if managed by an impostor, shows insane malevolence.
{202}

THE DANCING DEVIL

On 16th November, 1870, Mr. Shchapoff, a Russian squire, the narrator,
came home from a visit to a country town, Iletski, and found his
family in some disarray. There lived with him his mother and his
wife's mother, ladies of about sixty-nine, his wife, aged twen