"I told just a few people what I had seen, and contrived to get a wire sent me before lunch. Early in the afternoon I was on the way to Edinburgh."
Such was the story Lady Reay related.
Thirteen years later Captain Eric Streatfield, who was a nephew of Lord Strathmore, and an intimate friend of my husband, told me exactly the same story. He was a boy of six at the time, when the lady of Tudor days appeared moaning in his room, and he said he would never forget the misery of the night he passed. He was very much interested in hearing that Lady Reay had gone through the same experience. He told me another extraordinary story.
Whilst, as a school boy, he was visiting at Glamis Castle with his parents, he noticed that they began to behave in rather a peculiar manner. They were often consulting alone with one another, and constantly scanning the sky from their bedroom window, which adjoined his. For two or three days this sort of thing went on, and he caught queer fragments of conversation whispered between them, such as, "It doesn't always happen. We might be spared this year, the power must die out some day."
At last one evening his father called him into his room, where his mother stood by the open window. In his hand his father held an open watch.
His mother bade him look out, and tell them what sort of night it was. He replied that it was fine, and still and cold, and the stars were beginning to appear.
His father then said, "We want you to take particular note of the weather, for in another moment you may witness a remarkable change. Probably you will see a furious tempest."
Eric could not make head or tail of this. He wondered if his parents had gone mad, but glancing at his mother he noticed that she looked strangely pale and anxious.
Then the storm burst, with such terrific suddenness and fury that it terrified him. A howling tempest, accompanied by blinding lightning and deafening thunder, rushed down upon them from an absolutely clear sky.
His mother knelt down by the bed, and he thought that she was praying.