iest of the society women I have met. Though I have known her
sisters several years, I only met Torfrida for the first time a few
months ago, when she was superintending the nursing of her mother, who
had just undergone an operation for appendicitis. One day, when I was
visiting my convalescent friend, Torfrida informed me that she knew of
a haunted house in Edinburgh, a case which she felt sure would arouse
my interest and enthusiasm. "It is unfortunate," she added somewhat
regretfully, "that I cannot tell you the number of the house, but as
I have given my word of honour to disclose it to no one, I feel sure
you will excuse me. Indeed, my friends the Gordons, who extracted the
promise from me, have got into sad trouble with their landlord for
leaving the house under the pretext that it was haunted, and he has
threatened to prosecute them for slander of title."

The house in question has no claim to antiquity. It may be eighty years
old--perhaps a little older--and was, at the time of which I speak, let
out in flats. The Gordons occupied the second storey; the one above
them was untenanted, and used as a storage place for furniture; the
first floor and ground floor were divided into chambers and offices.
They had not been in their new quarters more than a week, when Mrs.
Gordon asked the night porter who it was that made such a noise, racing
up their stairs between two and three in the morning. It had awakened
her every night, she told him, and she would be glad if the disturbance
were discontinued. "I am sorry, Madam, but I cannot imagine who it can
be," the man replied. "Of course, it may be some one next door, sounds
are so often deceptive; no one inhabits the rooms above you." But Mrs.
Gordon was not at all convinced, and made up her mind to complain to
the landlord should it occur again. That night nothing happened, but
the night after she was roused from her sleep at two o'clock, by a
feeling that something dreadful, some dire catastrophe, was about to
take place. The house was very still, and beyond the far-away echoes of
a policeman's patrol on the hard pavement outside, nothing, absolutely
nothing, broke the universal, and as it seemed to her, unnatural
silence. Generally at night-time there are sounds one likes to assure
oneself are too trivial to be heard during the day--the creaking of
boards, stairs (nearly always stairs), and the tapping of some leaf (of
course some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard