got out of the room I don't recollect. I was too horror-stricken to know
exactly what I was doing, but I distinctly remember that, as I tugged
the door open, there was a low, gleeful chuckle, and something slipped
by me and disappeared in the direction of the corridor. At noon that day
my mother had a seizure of apoplexy, and died at midnight.

"Again there was a lapse of years--this time nearly four--when, sent on
an errand for my father, I turned the key of one of the doors leading
into the empty wing, and once again found myself within the haunted
precincts. All was just as it had been on the occasion of my last
visit--gloom, stillness and cobwebs reigned everywhere, whilst
permeating the atmosphere was a feeling of intense sadness and
depression.

"I did what was required of me as quickly as possible, and was crossing
one of the rooms to make my exit, when a dark shadow fell athwart the
threshold of the door, and I saw the cat.

* * * * *

"That evening my father dropped dead as he was hastening home through
the fields. He had long suffered from heart disease.

"After his death we--that is to say, my brother, sisters and self--were
obliged to leave the house and go out into the world to earn our living.
We never went there again, and never heard if any of the subsequent
tenants experienced similar manifestations."

This is as nearly as I can recollect Mrs. Hartnoll's story. But as it is
a good many years since I heard it, there is just a possibility of some