ce by
asking for milk. We then endeavoured to draw the good woman of the
house into conversation by admiring the place, and asking in a guarded
manner respecting the famous skull. On this subject she was most
reserved. She had only lately had the farmhouse, and had been obliged
to take possession of the skull also; but she did not wish us to
suppose that she knew much about it; it was a veritable 'skeleton in
the closet' to her. After exercising great diplomacy, we persuaded her
to allow us a sight of it. We tramped up the fine old staircase till
we reached the top of the house, when, opening a cupboard door, she
showed us a steep, winding staircase, leading to the roof, and from
one of the steps the skull sat grinning at us. We took it in our hands
and examined it carefully; it was very old and weather-beaten, and
certainly human. The lower jaw was missing, the forehead very low and
badly proportioned. One of our party, who was a medical student,
examined it long and gravely, and then, after first telling the good
woman that he was a doctor, pronounced it to be, in his opinion, the
skull of a negro. After this oracular utterance, she resolved to make
a clean breast of all she knew, which, however, did not amount to
much. The skull, we were informed, was that of a negro servant, who
had lived in the service of a Roman Catholic priest. Some difference
arose between them; but whether the priest murdered the servant, in
order to conceal some crimes known to the negro, or whether the negro,
in a fit of passion, killed his master, did not clearly appear.

However, the negro had declared before his death that his spirit would
not rest unless his body was taken to his native land and buried
there. This was not done, he being buried in the churchyard of
Bettiscombe. Then the haunting began; fearful screams proceeded from
the grave, the doors and windows of the house rattled and creaked,
strange sounds were heard all over the house; in short, there was no
rest for the inmates until the body was dug up. At different periods
attempts were made to bury the body, but similar disturbances always
recurred. In process of time the skeleton disappeared, 'all save the
skull,' and its reputation as 'the screaming skull' remains
unimpaired."

In a farm-house in Sussex are preserved two skulls from Hastings
Priory, about which many gruesome stories are current in the
neighbourhood. One of these skulls, it appears, has been in the house
ma