besieger of his house, so far
from taking fright at their approach, grew more impatient; and the sort
of patting which had aroused his attention at first assumed the rhythm
and emphasis of a series of double-knocks.

Mr. Prosser, angry, opened the door with his right arm across, cane in
hand. Looking, he saw nothing; but his arm was jerked up oddly, as it
might be with the hollow of a hand, and something passed under it, with
a kind of gentle squeeze. The servant neither saw nor felt anything, and
did not know why his master looked back so hastily, cutting with his
cane, and shutting the door with so sudden a slam.

From that time Mr. Prosser discontinued his angry talk and swearing
about it, and seemed nearly as averse from the subject as the rest of
his family. He grew, in fact, very uncomfortable, feeling an inward
persuasion that when, in answer to the summons, he had opened the
hall-door, he had actually given admission to the besieger.

He said nothing to Mrs. Prosser, but went up earlier to his bed-room,
'where he read a while in his Bible, and said his prayers.' I hope the
particular relation of this circumstance does not indicate its
singularity. He lay awake a good while, it appears; and, as he supposed,
about a quarter past twelve he heard the soft palm of a hand patting on
the outside of the bed-room door, and then brushed slowly along it.

Up bounced Mr. Prosser, very much frightened, and locked the door,
crying, 'Who's there?' but receiving no answer but the same brushing
sound of a soft hand drawn over the panels, which he knew only too well.

In the morning the housemaid was terrified by the impression of a hand
in the dust of the 'little parlour' table, where they had been unpacking
delft and other things the day before. The print of the naked foot in
the sea-sand did not frighten Robinson Crusoe half so much. They were by
this time all nervous, and some of them half-crazed, about the hand.

Mr. Prosser went to examine the mark, and made light of it but as he
swore afterwards, rather to quiet his servants than from any
comfortable feeling about it in his own mind; however, he had them all,
one by one, into the room, and made each place his or her hand, palm
downward, on the same table, thus taking a similar impression from every
person in the house, including himself and his wife; and his 'affidavit'
deposed that the formation of the hand so impressed differed altogether
from those of the living i