one of them, a
remarkably fine and docile animal, whose stall happened to be next the
window that opened on the water, was found to be in a perfect ecstasy
of terror, plunging, rearing and struggling to get loose in a manner
that rendered the task of releasing and removing him anything but an
easy or even a safe one. After the horse was got out of the stable and
led away, the question arose, What had frightened him? Could the man
they had seen passing behind the stable have done anything to terrify
him? Then, for the first time, it dawned on the minds of the whole
party that no human being could have walked where they had seen the
passing figure, as the wall rose straight from the verge of the water,
and there was no pathway between the wall and the stream, which in
that spot was deep, though not very wide. Strange to say, the horse
could never be induced to re-enter that stable, but always manifested
signs of wild alarm and excitement when brought even to the door,
though in all other respects he was perfectly gentle and tractable.

Owing to the size of the family, one of the large garret-rooms
had been fitted up as a bed-room for one of the younger boys, who
preferred having a chamber of his own to sharing the apartment of
one of his brothers. He had not occupied it long before he began to
complain of frightful dreams, and more than once he came trembling
down stairs and took refuge in his mother's room, terrified by
something horrible--_what_, he could not define, but something that
came into his room at night and roused him from his slumbers. Thinking
that the child was merely nervous and excitable, she changed the
arrangements, put him to sleep in the bed-room of one of his brothers,
and gave up the apartment in the garret to one of the servants. But
in a very short time the complaints were renewed: the girl could not
sleep on account of that vague, strange horror, which often drove her
shrieking and half awakened from her bed. So the lady had the room
dismantled, and used it as a lumber-room, and during the remaining
years of her occupancy of the house was troubled no more.

As time passed on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family
induced Mrs. X----'s father to purchase a house in town, and he
accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a
clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed
when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe
that noth