The Apparition of the Prior of Pittenweem.
It was in September 1875 that I first met dear old Captain Chester (now gone to his rest); and it was very many years before that date that he rented his fearsomely haunted old house in St Andrews.
I was a Cambridge boy when I met him—how the undergraduates scorn that term "boy." He told me the following queer tales in the Poppledorf Avenue at Bonn when I was on holiday.
The house he rented at St Andrews, from his accounts, must have been a most unpleasant and eerie dwelling. Rappings and hammerings were heard all over the house after nightfall, trembling of the walls, quiverings. Heavy falls and ear-piercing shrieks were also part of the nightly programme.
I suggested bats, rats, owls, and smugglers as the cause, which made the old man perfectly wild with rage, and caused him to use most unparliamentary language.
I pointed out that such language would probably have scared away any respectable ghost. However, let me tell the story in his own peculiar way.
"My brother and I took the house, sir," he said, "and we had a nephew and some nieces with us. There were also three middle-aged English servants at the time; and, gadsooth, sir, they had strange names. The cook possessed the extraordinary name of Maria Trombone, the housemaid was called Jemima Podge, and the other old cat was called Teresa Shadbolt.
"One evening I was sitting smoking in my study, when the door flew open with a bang and Maria rushed in.
"'Zounds! Mrs Trombone,' I said, 'how dare you come
