Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/98

88 in at. By the by, there once was a plate-closet, just behind the chair next the fireplace, but it was closed up ages ago, when my father had one made for the plate in his own bedroom. The closet now opens into the room at the back of this—my man-servant’s.”

“And formerly the housekeeper’s room; you remember, perhaps, that I came to see her, by her own request, a few days before she died?”

The Major fixed his eyes on Mr. Bradley as he was speaking, as if he were trying to read his thoughts, but it was in vain; if he had any secret, his mild countenance did not betray it.

“What do you say, Mr. Bradley, for I fancy you know something more than we do: tell me now, would you have any objection to sleeping here?”

“None whatever, except that I prefer a bed to a chair to sleep in.”

The Squire said, “The truth is that many years ago the room got a bad name, and it has not been slept in since; in fact, the house is so large that it has not been wanted. As to myself, I never did sleep in it, for I prefer my own room, which has a south aspect.”

“Perhaps,” suggested one of the party, “the rats may have found their way over the ceiling, or a cowl on some chimney top makes a noise—when people go to bed with nonsense of this sort in their heads, the hooting of an owl, or the roaring of the sea, or even the wind in the trees becomes something supernatural in their imagination.”

At length, much to the satisfaction of us young people, who scorned the idea of rats, cowls, or wind, and who had a strong inclination to believe in the supernatural, some of the Major’s traps, as he called them, were removed from the opposite room, as he declared that here, and nowhere else, would he spend the night. Some of the younkers proposed that he should be provided with pistols, but he shook his head, and said that he should be sufficiently armed against all comers with a good stout walking-stick.—“And you had better not attempt to play any tricks, my lads, unless you have a mind to get a broken head,” added he, laughing.

After some arrangements for the Major’s comfort, which, by the by, he protested against as being quite superfluous, the party dispersed for the night.

The first of October was as fine a morning as any sportsman could wish for. At a little after eight we were all in the breakfast-parlour, except the Squire and Mr. Bradley, who were slowly walking up and down the grass plot before the windows, apparently in earnest conversation.

The Major had already been besieged by a number of questions, which he answered in a joking manner, saying that the morning was not the time for such subjects, that we must keep our nerves steady, and think no more about hobgoblins, or the pheasants would escape us. But when the Squire and Mr. Bradley joined us, and the latter pointedly asked him how he had passed the night, he replied:

“I really am sorry to disappoint you, but I must confess that I slept very well, and I saw nothing worse than myself (after these young chaps left the room, I mean)—what I heard is another affair!”

“What—what did you hear, sir?” from half a dozen of us at once.

“I heard—don’t let me alarm you—I heard the fellow in the room at the back of mine snoring like a pig.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, upon my honour, nothing else; my story is a very short one!”

“It is very satisfactory,” said the old clergyman. “In the evening the Squire and I shall have our stories to tell, but not till then, as there are some matters connected with my story which are not quite clear. While you are out shooting, I am in hopes of finding the missing links in a chain of evidence which will be satisfactory to all parties.”

When breakfast was over, all those amongst us who were sportsmen took their guns, and went out for a day’s shooting. I have seen younger men than the Major knocked up after walking for five or six hours through turnip-fields and underwood, with a double-barrelled gun on their shoulders; but he seemed as full of mirth and jollity as he was the day before, and assured us, when we sat down to dinner, that he felt as fresh after his day’s work, as he should have done twenty years ago.

In the evening we reminded Mr. Bradley of the promise he had made us.

“I had not forgotten it,” he replied; “but it will be best that the Squire should tell his part of the story first.”

The Squire said, “If it had not been for the—what shall I call it?—obstinacy? resolution? firmness? of my old friend, here, who would persist in sleeping in that unlucky room last night, and the fortunate circumstance of Mr. Bradley’s being here, you certainly would never have heard, from me at least, any account of the mystery which has so long perplexed me. I must begin by telling you, that to the best of my knowledge that room was never slept in but twice since I was born, and I am more than forty years old. You heard what the Major said respecting our old housekeeper. She and her husband lived here in my grandfather’s time, they grew old in service, and died within a few weeks of one another. On the day that the old woman was buried, as I was returning from the funeral, I overheard something which, it appeared to me, was spoken purposely for me to hear, though it was addressed by one old village gossip to another. I do not recollect the precise words, but the purport was, that the Squire would have no more evil spirits in his house now. This brought to my mind the strange stories which I used to hear when I was a boy, and without having the slightest idea that my father attached any importance to the matter, for I never in my life had heard him allude to it, I unwittingly asked him what could have induced the housekeeper to tell such terrible stories about one room in his house. You may imagine how much I was astonished at his reply, when he told me that what the housekeeper had said was but too true!

‘For some time past,’ he added, ‘I have