"I think I have now told you all that is necessary for understanding my experience.
"I must ask you to remember that yesterday was the thirteenth of April. I went to bed about eleven o'clock, and soon fell asleep. I could not, however, have slept long before I woke with an unusual feeling that something strange was going to happen.
"I awoke, not as one does in the morning, with a drowsy resolve not to go to sleep again because it is time to get up, but as one awakes when a journey or some similar event is imminent, for which one's faculties have to be clear, and one's body active and alert. I was rather wondering at and enjoying the unusual clearness and energy of thought of which I felt capable, when the clock in the hall began striking, and, almost at the same moment, the clock of the old Church of St Andrew began striking also.
"I knew that both were striking twelve, though I did not count the blows, but just as the last stroke of the church clock died away, another sound caught my ear.
"The door by the fireplace gave a loud crack and then opened, as if with some difficulty.
"The red door at the same time rattled, as if someone were trying vainly to open it. The room had previously been dark, but I now plainly saw a tall figure come through the doorway and stand near the foot of the bed. There was a dull, yellowish light round the figure, which illumined it, leaving the rest of the room in darkness; but this yellow light, I perceived, became red at one point of the figure's left side, and shone down on the floor with a red glow, like that which came through the opposite door.
"The apparition stood quite silent whilst I looked at it. The features and figure were familiar to me for they were those of Captain Richard Carbury, in the portrait, who had gone out to Georgia with the regiment of His Excellency, General Oglethorpe!
"As soon as I was sure of this, I said: 'You are Captain Richard Carbury?'
"The apparition nodded.
"'Why do you come to me?' I said. 'Cannot you speak?'