had a drive of so mournful a
character.

The avenue presently opened out upon a lawn with overgrown shrubberies,
and in the half darkness I could see the outline of the Grange itself, a
rambling, dilapidated building. A dim light struggled through the
casement of a window in a tower room. Save for the melancholy cry of a
row of owls sitting on the roof, and croaking of the frogs in the moat
which ran around the grounds, the place was soundless. My driver halted
his horse at the hither side of the moat. I tried in vain to urge him,
by signs, to go further. I could see by the fellow's face that he was
in a paroxysm of fear, and indeed nothing but the extra sixpence which I
had added to his fare would have made him undertake the drive up the
avenue. I had no sooner alighted than he wheeled his cab about and made
off.

Laughing heartily at the fellow's trepidation (I have a way of laughing
heartily in the dark), I made my way to the door and pulled the
bell-handle. I could hear the muffled reverberations of the bell far
within the building. Then all was silent. I bent my ear to listen, but
could hear nothing except, perhaps, the sound of a low moaning as of a
person in pain or in great mental distress. Convinced, however, from
what my friend Sir Jeremy Buggam had told me, that the Grange was not
empty, I raised the ponderous knocker and beat with it loudly against
the door.

But perhaps at this point I may do well to explain to my readers (before
they are too frightened to listen to me) how I came to be beating on the
door of Buggam Grange at nightfall on a gloomy November evening.

A year before I had been sitting with Sir Jeremy Buggam, the present
baronet, on the verandah of his ranch in California.

"So you don't believe in the supernatural?" he was saying.

"Not in the slightest," I answered, lighting a cigar as I spoke. When I
want to speak very positively, I generally light a cigar as I speak.

"Well, at any rate, Digby," said Sir Jeremy, "Buggam Grange is haunted.
If you want to be assured of it go down there any time and spend the
night and you'll see for yourself."

"My dear fellow," I replied, "nothing will give me greater pleasure. I
shall be back in England in six weeks, and I shall be delighted to put
your ideas to the test. Now tell me," I added somewhat cynically, "is
there any particular season or day when your Grange is supposed to be
specially terrible?"

Sir Jeremy looked at me strangely. "Wh