ealth to discuss such
eerie questions just then. All the same, you had located the exact spot
where only a week before your visit, my husband's agent told him that
two skeletons had been found bricked up!"

She then explained that the agent had been on the estate for many years,
even before the death of the late owner of Rush--her father-in-law.
Having some business with her husband the week before my arrival, this
agent had casually mentioned that he and the former owner had found
these skeletons in the very spot indicated by me, about forty years
previously, and, strange to relate, had bricked them up again instead of
burying them. This last fact may account in part at least for the spooky
reputation of Castle Rush.

All good psychics know that nothing disturbs a spirit so much as any
informality about his funeral arrangements!

To return to my visit to Castle Rush.

Some years previously I had met, on an Orient steamer sailing from
Ceylon to Naples, a brother of the owner of Rush. He was a sailor, and
as hard-headed and practical a man as it has ever been my lot to meet.
It was in no way through meeting him that my visit to Rush came about,
but owing to my acquaintance with Mrs Kent and _her_ family.

I had been greatly taken by the genial common-sense of this Captain
Kent, and was much grieved to hear of his death when I stayed with his
sister-in-law. It had occurred shortly before my visit, and under sad
circumstances.

On the surface he was certainly more lacking in sentiment than anyone I
ever met, but must have been capable of very deep affection. When I met
him he had only been married for a few months. His wife died within two
years of their marriage, and going for a short holiday to Castle Rush
soon afterwards, he said to his sister-in-law:

"_I shall not live a year after her, I know!_" He was the last kind of
man to make such a speech, as both Mrs Kent and I observed when she
mentioned it to me.

"But he was quite right, all the same," she added. "_He died just three
days within the year from the time of his wife's death._" Yet he was an
exceptionally strong, sturdy, and wiry man at the time of his great
sorrow.

From Castle Rush I was going to the south of Ireland to visit relations
at Cork.

On the morning of my departure I was down in the drawing-room, rather
wondering _why_ I had been brought to this old Irish castle. No special
object seemed to have been achieved by my visit. I did not eve