"It's stuff and nonsense," I interposed, "but what yarns did they tell?"
"They one and all related the same singular experience," she answered, "though neither of them knew what the experience of the others had been."
"What was it?" I asked with resolute incredulity.
"Why, each of them went to the room in full confidence that nothing would happen. Each went to bed and to sleep. After a while he waked to find the whole room pervaded by a dim, yellowish gray or grayish yellow light. Some of them used one combination of words and some the other, but all agreed that the light had no apparent source, that it was all-pervasive, that it was very dim at first, but that it steadily increased until they fled in panic from its nameless terror. For ten years we permitted no repetition of the experiment, but a year ago my brother—he's an army officer, you know—insisted upon sleeping in the room. He remained there longer than anybody else ever had done, but between two and three o'clock in the morning he came down the stairs with barely enough strength to cling to the balustrades, and in such an ague fit as I never saw any one else endure in all my life. He had served in the Florida swamps and was subject to agues, but for several months before that he had been free from them. I suppose the terror attacked his weakest point and brought the chills on again."
A Challenge to the Ghosts
"Did he have the same experience the rest had had?" I asked.
"Yes, except that he had stayed longer than any of them and suffered more."
"Cousin Mary," I said, "I am going to sleep in that room to-night, with your permission."
"You can't have it," she answered. "I've seen too much of the terror to permit a further trifling with it."
"Then I'll sleep there without your permission," I answered. "I'll break in if necessary, and I'll prove by a demonstration that nobody can question, what nonsense all these imaginings have been."