Sir Walter. "Ancient houses, as you say, often get some legend
tacked on to them, and here a garden walk, or there a room, or
passage, is associated with something uncanny and contrary to
experience. This is an old Tudor place, and has been tinkered and
altered in successive generations. We have one room at the
eastern end of the great corridor which always suffered from a bad
reputation. Nobody has ever seen anything in our time, and neither
my father nor grandfather ever handed down any story of a personal
experience. It is a bedroom, which you shall see, if you care to
do so. One very unfortunate and melancholy thing happened in it.
That was some twelve years ago, when Mary was still a child--two
years after my dear wife died."

"Tell us nothing that can cause you any pain, Walter," said Ernest
Travers.

"It caused me very acute pain at the time. Now it is old history
and mercifully one can look back with nothing but regret. One must,
however, mention an incident in my father's time, though it has
nothing to do with my own painful experience. However, that is
part of the story--if story it can be called. A death occurred
in the Grey Room when I was a child. Owing to the general vague
feeling entertained against it, we never put guests there, and so
long ago as my father's day it was relegated to a store place and
lumber-store. But one Christmas, when we were very full, there
came quite unexpectedly on Christmas Eve an aunt of my father--an
extraordinary old character who never did anything that might be
foreseen. She had never come to the family reunion before, yet
appeared on this occasion, and declared that, as this was going to
be her last Christmas on earth, she had felt it right to join the