ss us all.

Parts of the house, it appeared, were of very great age, although
successive owners had added portions. There were fascinating
traditions connected with the place; secret rooms walled up since the
Middle Ages, a private stair whose entrance, though undiscoverable,
was said to be somewhere in the orchard to the west of the ancient
chapel. It had been built by an ancestor of Sir Lionel who had
flourished in the reign of the eighth Henry. At this point in his
reminiscences (Smith had an astonishing memory where recondite facts
were concerned) there came an interruption.

The smooth voice of the butler almost made me leap from my chair, as
he spoke out of the shadows immediately behind me.

"The '45 port, sir," he said--and proceeded to place a crusted bottle
upon the table. "Sir Lionel desires me to say that he is with you in
spirit and that he proposes the health of Dr. Petrie and his fiancee',
whom he hopes to have the pleasure of meeting in the morning."

Truly it was a singular situation, and I am unlikely ever to forget
the scene as the three of us solemnly rose to our feet and drank our
host's toast, thus proposed by proxy, under the eye of Homopoulo, who
stood a shadowy figure in the background.

The ceremony solemnly performed and the gloomy butler having departed
with a suitable message to Sir Lionel--

"I was about to tell you," resumed Nayland Smith, with a gaiety
palpably forced, "of the traditional ghost of Graywater Park. He is a
black clad priest, said to be the Spanish chaplain of the owner of the
Park in the early days of the Reformation. Owing to some little
misunderstanding with His Majesty's commissioners, this unfortunate
churchman met with an untimely death, and his shade is said to haunt
the secret room--the site of which is unknown--and to clamor upon the
door, and upon the walls of the private stair."

I thought the subject rather ill chosen, but recognized that my friend
was talking more or less at random and in desperation; indeed, failing
his reminiscences of Graywater Park, I think the demon of silence must
have conquered us completely.

"Presumably," I said, unconsciously speaking as though I feared the
sound of my own voice, "this Spanish priest was confined at some time
in the famous hidden chamber?"

"He was supposed to know the secret of a hoard of church property, and
tradition has it, that he was put to the question in some gloomy
dungeon ..."

He ceased abruptly