something move in the passage just then?"

Whereupon Jane and Mary would spring to their feet, and, with pallid
faces, starting eyes, and blanched lips, cling convulsively to each
other, convinced that at last their unspoken fears were about to be
dreadfully realised.

It will naturally be supposed that these _seances_ would have a
dreadfully trying effect upon my infantile nerves; but, strangely
enough, they did not. I never looked beneath my cot with the
expectation of discovering a midnight assassin; for, in the first place,
the outer doors of the house were always kept so carefully closed that I
did not see how such an individual could well get in; and, in the second
place, admitting, for argument's sake, the possibility of his effecting
an entrance, I did not for a moment believe he would give himself the
wholly unnecessary trouble of murdering a little boy, or girl either,
for that matter. Then, as to the ghosts, though it never occurred to me
to doubt their existence, I entirely failed to understand why people
should be afraid of them. I felt that, in regarding these beings as
objects of dread and apprehension, the housemaid, the cook, and in fact
everybody who took this view of them, entirely misunderstood them, and
were doing the poor shadows a most grievous injustice. My own
experience of ghosts led me to the conclusion that, so far from their
being inimical to mankind, they were distinctly benign. There was one
ghost in particular to whose visitations I used to look forward with the
greatest delight; and I was never so happy as when I awoke in the
morning with the vague remembrance that, at some time during the silent
watches of the past night, I had become conscious of a sweet and
gracious presence beside my cot, bending over me with eyes which looked
unutterable love into mine, and with lips which mingled kisses of
tenderest affection with softly-breathed blessings upon my infant head.
At first I used to mention these visitations to Mary, my nurse, but I
soon forbore to do so, noticing that she always looked uncomfortably
startled for a moment or two afterwards, and generally dismissed the
subject somewhat hurriedly by remarking:

"Ah, poor lamb! you've been dreaming about your mother."

Which remark annoyed me, for I felt convinced that so realistic an
experience could not possibly result from a mere dream.

It sometimes happened that there were no tragedies or other horrors in
the newspapers suf