an English maid,
having gone into the pantry for the small silver bowl in which her
mistress's posset was served, happening to look up at the little window
of only four panes, observed through an auger-hole which was drilled
through the window frame, for the admission of a bolt to secure the
shutter, a white pudgy finger--first the tip, and then the two first
joints introduced, and turned about this way and that, crooked against
the inside, as if in search of a fastening which its owner designed to
push aside. When the maid got back into the kitchen we are told 'she
fell into "a swounde," and was all the next day very weak.'

Mr. Prosser being, I've heard, a hard-headed and conceited sort of
fellow, scouted the ghost, and sneered at the fears of his family. He
was privately of opinion that the whole affair was a practical joke or a
fraud, and waited an opportunity of catching the rogue _flagrante
delicto_. He did not long keep this theory to himself, but let it out by
degrees with no stint of oaths and threats, believing that some domestic
traitor held the thread of the conspiracy.

Indeed it was time something were done; for not only his servants, but
good Mrs. Prosser herself, had grown to look unhappy and anxious. They
kept at home from the hour of sunset, and would not venture about the
house after night-fall, except in couples.

The knocking had ceased for about a week; when one night, Mrs. Prosser
being in the nursery, her husband, who was in the parlour, heard it
begin very softly at the hall-door. The air was quite still, which
favoured his hearing distinctly. This was the first time there had been
any disturbance at that side of the house, and the character of the
summons was changed.

Mr. Prosser, leaving the parlour-door open, it seems, went quietly into
the hall. The sound was that of beating on the outside of the stout
door, softly and regularly, 'with the flat of the hand.' He was going to
open it suddenly, but changed his mind; and went back very quietly, and
on to the head of the kitchen stair, where was a 'strong closet' over
the pantry, in which he kept his firearms, swords, and canes.

Here he called his man-servant, whom he believed to be honest, and, with
a pair of loaded pistols in his own coat-pockets, and giving another
pair to him, he went as lightly as he could, followed by the man, and
with a stout walking-cane in his hand, forward to the door.

Everything went as Mr. Prosser wished. The