“I did,” said the friend firmly.
Some persuasion was necessary before she would relate her experience. At last it was extracted from her in some such shape as this:
“I couldn’t sleep. Towards two in the morning I heard a noise. I thought it was rats. I sat up in bed to feel for the matches: couldn’t find them. There came a light, on the opposite wall. I stared. I saw a monk in it. He began to move. He didn’t look alive: he looked like a magic lantern. He went out of the room through the closed door. I got up, opened the door, looked out into the passage. Yes, Mary, the light was there, and the figure in it, too. It moved along the wall. I followed it. It disappeared before the cross doors. I went back to bed. No, I’m not frightened, but I haven’t slept. I’d like another room, please. No, I wasn’t asleep—it wasn’t a dream. I can’t explain it. Nor you either, I suppose.”
The hostess pondered. It was true she couldn’t explain. She had heard of that apparition before—perhaps had seen it. It was certainly very annoying. She promised her friend to give instant orders for the preparation of another room; and then made a request that the matter should not be mentioned to her daughter—an impressionable, imaginative girl of eighteen.
The maiden lady snorted. It wasn’t likely.
Rosamund, the daughter, had of course known all about it long ago; while, after the fashion of her kind, keeping her counsel demurely before her elders, she had discussed freely the thrilling appanage of her new home with all the companions of her own age who came to stay at the Abbey.
It was she who was destined to lay the ghost. One rainy afternoon later in the same summer, the young members of the house-party found themselves stranded together in the great hall, and Rosamund cheerfully suggested table-turning and spirit-rapping to while away the time till tea. It is a never-failing amusement.
Having produced a satisfactory condition of lurching, and elicited several quite distinct raps from the round mahogany table, she cried out: