'We--McLeod and I--slept in a dormitory at right angles to the main
building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. There
was a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can't tell exactly, but
some time between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. It
was McLeod; and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. "Come," he
said,--"come! there's a burglar getting in through Sampson's window." As
soon as I could speak, I said, "Well, why not call out and wake everybody
up?" "No, no," he said, "I'm not sure who it is: don't make a row: come
and look." Naturally I came and looked, and naturally there was no one
there. I was cross enough, and should have called McLeod plenty of names:
only--I couldn't tell why--it seemed to me that there _was_ something
wrong--something that made me very glad I wasn't alone to face it. We
were still at the window looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked him
what he had heard or seen. "I didn't _hear_ anything at all," he said,
"but about five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out of
this window here, and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's
window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning." "What sort
of man?" McLeod wriggled. "I don't know," he said, "but I can tell you
one thing--he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over:
and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear
himself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive."

'We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept
back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. I
believe we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day.

'And next day Mr Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe no
trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one of
the oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact that
neither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third person