returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who,
noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks
through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing
the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and
frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the
next morning, lying in a heap against the door, still speechless,
and with his faithful latch-key clasped tightly in his hand.

All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on
Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening
than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be
impossible in English society as at present regulated. Therefore,
in introducing the sad but authentic ghost stories that follow
hereafter, I feel that it is unnecessary to inform the student of
Anglo-Saxon literature that the date on which they were told and on
which the incidents took place was--Christmas Eve.

Nevertheless, I do so.



NOW THE STORIES CAME TO BE TOLD



It was Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve at my Uncle John's; Christmas
Eve (There is too much 'Christmas Eve' about this book. I can see
that myself. It is beginning to get monotonous even to me. But I
don't see how to avoid it now.) at No. 47 Laburnham Grove, Tooting!
Christmas Eve in the dimly-lighted (there was a gas-strike on)