"Now I am not a believer in ghosts or their allies, but when I was a small boy I went on my pony accompanied by two servants, who were taking a parcel to a house next door to the Tally Ho, and whilst they were inside the house, all at once the pony snorted and started full gallop for home as hard as he could go; we parted company going down a steep hill, and I have often thought it was a good thing for me we did, for if he had bolted into his stable (which he did do) I should probably have had my head smashed, as the doorway was very low.
"Still, I do not believe in ghosts, I think it is more convenient not to!"
CHAPTER XVII
ACROSS THE THRESHOLD
Once upon a time I had an interesting experience showing how often one may be in the presence of the disembodied without being in the least aware of the fact.
It was a bright, cold day in October, with a biting wind and brilliant sunshine. About midday I was walking up a long avenue leading to a great house. On either side of me, for a mile or so, lay flat, open grass country, pasturages full of grazing cattle. The trees bordering the avenue stood at about thirty feet apart; they were gigantic beeches of considerable age. Their silvery trunks of wide girth were smooth and straight, and in no way impeded the view on all sides. The avenue was wide and straight and bordered by grass out of which the trees sprang.
As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction, and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.
Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century, and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I speculated as to who she could possibly be.