hose which followed, that
I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy.

"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed, ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and
still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted
apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that,
huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, I made my escape from
your lordship's mansion to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous
system, shaken as it was by this horrible encounter with a visitant, for
such I must believe her, from the other world.

"Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomfiture, and of my
sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other places I trust we
may often meet; but God protect me from ever spending a second night under
that roof!"

Strange as the general's tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of
conviction that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on
such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did
not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by
which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances--as wild
vagaries of the fancy or deceptions of the optic nerves.

On the contrary he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of
what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause, regretted, with much
appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have
suffered so severely.

"I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne," he continued, "that
it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my
own. You must know that, for my father and grandfather's time at least,
the apartment which was assigned to you last night had been shut on
account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and
noises.

"When I came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought
the accommodation which the castle afforded for my friends was not
extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to
retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment.

"I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be opened;
and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such new articles of
furniture placed in it as became the modern times. Yet as the opinion that
the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was
also known in the