Page:Hallowe'en festivities (1903).djvu/97

Rh MY GHOST STORY. In the year 1704 a gentleman of large fortune took furnished lodgings in a house in Soho Square. After he had resided there some weeks, he lost his brother, who had lived at Hampstead, and who on his death-bed particularly desired to be interred in the family vault at Westminster Abbey. The gentleman requested his landlord to permit him to bring the corpse of his brother to his lodgings, and to make arrangements there for the funeral. The landlord without hesitation signified his compliance.

The body, dressed in a white shroud, was brought in a very handsome coffin and placed in a great dining-room. The funeral was to take place the next day, and the lodger and his servants went out to make preparations for the solemnity. He stayed out late; but this was no uncommon thing. The landlord and his family, conceiving that they had no occasion to wait for him, retired to bed about twelve o'clock. One maid-servant was left up to let him in, and to boil some water, which he had desired might be readv for making tea on his return. The girl was accordingly sitting all alone in the kitchen, when a tall spectre-looking figure entered and clapped itself down in a chair opposite to her.

The maid was by no means one of the most timid of her sex; but she was terrified beyond expression, lonely as she was, at this unexpected apparition. Uttering a loud scream, she flew out like an arrow at a side door, and hurried to the chamber of her master and mistress. Scarcely had she wakened them and communicated to the whole family some part of the fright with which she was herself overwhelmed, when the spectre, enveloped in a shroud, and with a. face of death-like paleness, made its appearance and sat