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This was Bertram Armand’s account of his experience. In answer to my questions he told me that he had searched the wood thoroughly, but there was no house of any sort in it, and afterwards, having had his father’s body secretly exhumed, and finding lead in the ear, he had obtained an order for the arrest of his step-mother. She was, however, nowhere to be found, and he supposed that, having got wind of the affair, she had escaped out of the country.
Armand told his story with every appearance of sincerity, and as I could see that his wife believed it, I have no doubt at all that it was true.
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The case of another haunting in Canada was told me on my way out to the States, on board one of the White Star Liners.
My place at table was next to a Doctor and Mrs. Fanshawe, both Canadians, who, hearing that I was interested in everything connected with the superphysical, told me that they had had several rather curious experiences. The doctor took from his breast-pocket a small leather purse, and, opening it, showed me a dull, blue stone.
“Are you a geologist?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I know nothing whatever about stones. What is it?”
“No one has ever been able to tell me,” he said. “I have shown it to several Professors at the English Universities and they have each classified it differently. Not one of them, I believe, had ever seen or even heard of a stone like it. And for a very simple reason. In Canada there is much soil that has never been disturbed, and many tracts of land no white man has ever trod.