Page:James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary .djvu/269

238 see a Honnest Brish Face among all These Forig ones.

'I am Sir 'Your obed$t$ Serv$t$ ' 'P.S.—The Villiage for Town I will not Turm. It is name Steenfeld.'

The reader must be left to picture to himself in detail the surprise, confusion and hurry of preparation into which the receipt of such a letter would be likely to plunge a quiet Berkshire parsonage in the year of grace 1859. It is enough for me to say that a train to town was caught in the course of the day, and that Mr. Gregory was able to secure a cabin in the Antwerp boat and a place in the Coblentz train. Nor was it difficult to manage the transit from that centre to Steinfeld.

I labour under a grave disadvantage as narrator of this story in that I have never visited Steinfeld myself, and that neither of the principal actors in the episode (from whom I derive my information) was able to give me