into a more cheerful and healthier channel.

I cannot say that I was very successful. I further noticed that he
scarcely ate anything, and seemed altogether to be in a state of nervous
tension painful to witness.

After dinner we went into the smoking-room, and at eleven o'clock I
proposed that we should make a start.

Clinton braced himself together and we went out. He got the chapel keys,
and then going to the stables we borrowed a lantern, and a moment
afterwards found ourselves in the sacred edifice. The moon was at her
full, and by the pale light which was diffused through the south windows
the architecture of the interior could be faintly seen. The Gothic
arches that flanked the centre aisle with their quaint pillars, each
with a carved figure of one of the saints, were quite visible, and
further in the darkness of the chancel the dim outlines of the choir and
altar-table with its white marble reredos could be just discerned.

We closed the door softly and, Clinton leading the way with the lantern,
we walked up the centre aisle paved with the brasses of his dead
ancestors. We trod gently on tiptoe as one instinctively does at night.
Turning beneath the little pulpit we reached the north transept, and
here Clinton stopped and turned round. He was very white, but his voice
was quiet.

"This is the pew," he whispered. "It has always been called the haunted
pew of Sir Hugh Clinton."

I took the lantern from him and we entered. I crossed the pew
immediately and went up to the effigy of the old abbot.

"Let us examine him closely," I said. I held up the lantern, getting it
to shine on each part of the face, the vestments, and the figure. The
eyes, although vacant, as in all statuary, seemed to me at that moment
to be uncanny and peculiar. Giving Allen the lantern to hold, I placed a
finger firmly on each. The next moment I could not refrain from an
exclamation; a stone at the side immediately rolled back, revealing the
steps which were spoken of by the old man in his narrative.

"It is true! It is true!" cried Clinton excitedly.

"It certainly looks like it," I remarked: "but never mind, we have the
chance now of investigating this matter thoroughly."

"Are you going down?" asked Clinton.

"Certainly I am," I replied. "Let us go together."

Immediately afterwards we crept through the opening and began to
descend. There was only just room to do so in single file, and I went
first with the lantern. In anothe