into my room like this?'
"'Well, sir,' she said, 'there are hawful things going on to-night. I'm frighted to death. I was washing hup, please sir, when something rushed passed me with a rustle, and I got a great smack on the cheek with a damp, cold hand, and then the place shook, and all the things clattered like anything.'
"'Nonsense, Trombone,' I said, 'you were asleep, or have you been drinking, eh?'
"'Lor' bless you, sir, no! never a drop; but last night, sir, Teresa Shadbolt had all the bedclothes pulled off her bed twice, sir, and Jane said a tall old man in a queer dressing-gown came into her room and brushed his white beard over her face, and, lor', sir, didn't you hear her a-screamin'?'
"'No, I'm hanged if I did. You must all be stark, staring mad, you know.'
"'Not a bit of us, master,' continued Mrs Trombone. 'There is something wrong about this blessed house—locked doors and windows fly wide open, and the bells keep ringin' at all hours of the night, and we hear steps on the stairs when everyone is in bed, and knocks, and crashes, and screams. Then the tables and things go moving about. No Christian could put up with it, please sir. We must all leave.'
"Well, I got all those women up, and they told me deuced queer things, but I squared them up at last."
"How?" I inquired.
"I doubled their wages, sir, and I told them they might all sleep in one room upstairs together, and I promised them a real good blow-out at Christmas, and so on.
"Next my nephew and little nieces saw the old man with the long white beard at various times in the passages and on the stairs. Oddly enough, my little nieces got quite accustomed to see the aged man with the grey beard, and were not a bit timid. They said he was just like the pictures of old Father Christmas, and he looked kind.
"I never saw him," continued Chester, "till one All Hallows Night, or Hallowe'en as they termed it in St Andrews; but I will speak of that later on."
"Go on," I said, "it is very interesting indeed to me."
