Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/206

160 stooping over the beds of the children. After that she engaged a superior Swiss nurse, who saw nothing—not being able to hear the tales of the revenant told by the other domestics.

Mrs. Sperling, now of Coombe Trenchard, which was the old rectory, had her brother staying with her, Alister Grant, son of the Hon. A. Grant of Grant. He did much fishing in Lew water. We had then a very pretty governess, Miss Wilson, and Alister Grant was much smitten with her. One night he went to Lew Mill to see how the pheasants were getting on, that the keeper was rearing, and sat on chatting with the keeper till late. As he returned along the road at the rear of the Avenue, parallel with it, and the moon was full, he saw a figure of a woman in white or grey, he could not say which, walking in the Avenue. Thinking it might be Miss Wilson, he leaned over the low wall, and spoke to her: but the figure passed on between the boles of the trees. He spoke again—but there was no answer. Then it occurred to him that we were away at Bude, and that Miss Wilson was also away for her holiday. He became frightened, and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, till he had passed Lew House. He knew well enough that not one of our servants would venture to walk in the Avenue at night.

In 1877, a friend of mine, Mr. Keeling, a solicitor at Colchester, was staying with me at Lew. He was sitting one evening in the settle, and I in the arm-chair opposite him, in the hall. It was night and late. All at once we heard a sound as of steps issuing from the door into what is now the ballroom, behind the settle, walking the length of the hall, with a dragging sound as of a trailing silk or satin dress. We both heard it. Keeling sprang to his feet and exclaimed: "Good God! what is that?" I remained standing, for I also had risen, and thinking that possibly a drift of rain had swept the window, I ran to the door, opened it and looked out at the pavement before the window; it was perfectly dry.

On the confines of Orchard is a gloomy valley, called the Deep Way, through which trickles a rill of water, under the shadow of a plantation and wood. The Bratton-Clovelly road plunges into it—it is the ancient Via Regia—crosses a little bridge, and scrambles up the opposite side through the gloom of the overhanging trees. The gradient recently has been reduced by cutting