The house was very old--probably the sixteenth century--and was
concealed from the thoroughfare by a high wall that enclosed it on all
sides. It had no garden, only a large yard, covered with faded yellow
paving-stones, and containing a well with an old-fashioned roller and
bucket. When the well was cleaned out, an event which took place periodically
on a certain date, every utensil in the house was called into
requisition for ladling out the water, and the Admiral, himself
supervising, made every servant in the establishment take an active
part in the proceedings. On one of these occasions, the Admiral
announced his intention of going down the well in the bucket. That was
a rare moment in Letty's life, for when the Admiral had been let down
in the bucket, the rope broke! Indeed, the thought of what the Laird would say when he came up,
almost resulted in his not coming up at all. However, some one,
rather bolder than the rest, retained sufficient presence of mind to
effect a rescue, and the timid ones, thankful enough to survive the
explosion, had to be content on "half-rations till further orders." But in spite of its association with such a martinet, and in spite of
her ghostly experiences in it, Letty loved the house, and was never
tired of singing its praises. It was a two-storeyed mansion, with roomy cellars but no basement. There were four reception-rooms--all oak-panelled--on the ground
floor; numerous kitchen offices, including a cosy housekeeper's room;
and a capacious entrance hall, in the centre of which stood a broad
oak staircase. The cellars, three in number, and chiefly used as
lumber-rooms, were deep down and dank and horrid. On the first floor eight bedrooms opened on to a gallery overlooking
the hall, and the top storey, where the servants slept, consisted
solely of attics connected with one another by dark, narrow passages. It was one of these attics that was haunted, although, as a matter of
fact, the ghost had been seen in all parts of the house. When Letty entered the Admiral's service she was but a bairn, and had
never even heard of ghosts; nor did the other servants apprise her of
the hauntings, having received strict injunctions not to do so from
the Laird. But Letty's home, humble though it was, had been very bright and
cheerful, and the dark precincts of the mansion filled her with
dismay. Without exactly knowing why she was afraid, she shrank in
terror from descending into the cellars, and felt anything but pleased
at the prospect of sleeping alone in an attic. Still nothing occurred
to really alarm her till about a month after her arrival. It was early
in the evening, soon after twilight, and she had gone down into one of
the cellars to look for a boot-jack, which the Admiral swore by all
that was holy must be found before supper. Placing the light she had
brought with her on a packing-case, she was groping about among the
boxes, when she perceived, to her astonishment, that the flame of the
candle had suddenly turned blue. She then felt icy cold, and was much
startled on hearing a loud clatter as of some metal instrument on the
stone floor in the far-off corner of the cellar. Glancing in the
direction of the noise, she saw, looking at her, two eyes--two
obliquely set, lurid, light eyes, full of the utmost devilry. Sick
with terror and utterly unable to account for what she beheld, she
stood stock-still, her limbs refusing to move, her throat parched, her
tongue tied. The clanging was repeated, and a shadowy form began
slowly to crawl towards her. She dared not afterwards surmise what
would have happened to her, had not the Laird himself come down at
this moment. At the sound of his stentorian voice the phantasm
vanished. But the shock had been too much for Letty; she fainted, and
the Admiral, carrying her upstairs as carefully as if she had been his
own daughter, gave peremptory orders that she should never again be
allowed to go into the cellar alone. But now that Letty herself had witnessed a manifestation, the other
servants no longer felt bound to secrecy, and soon poured into her
ears endless accounts of the hauntings. Every one, they informed her, except Master Gregory and Perkins (the
butler) had seen one or other of the ghosts, and the cellar
apparition was quite familiar to them all. They also declared that
there were other parts of the house quite as badly haunted as the
cellar, and it might have been partly owing to these gruesome stories
that poor Letty always felt scared, when crossing the passages leading
to the attics. As she was hastening down one of them, early one
morning, she heard some one running after her. Thinking it was one of
the other servants, she turned round, pleased to think that some one
else was up early too, and saw to her horror a dreadful-looking
object, that seemed to be partly human and partly animal. The body was
quite small, and its face bloated, and covered with yellow spots. It
had an enormous animal mouth, the lips of which, moving furiously
without emitting any sound, showed that the creature was endeavouring
to speak but could not. The moment Letty screamed for help the
phantasm vanished. But her worst experience was yet to come. The spare attic which she
was told was so badly haunted that no one would sleep in it, was the
room next to hers. It was a room Letty could well believe was
haunted, for she had never seen another equally gloomy. The ceiling
was low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all
sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood
in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with
the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and
groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. Once she
heard a chuckle, a low, diabolical chuckle, which she fancied came
from the chest; and once, when the door of the room was open, she
caught the glitter of a pair of eyes--the same pale, malevolent eyes
that had so frightened her in the cellar. From her earliest childhood
Letty had been periodically given to somnambulism, and one night, just
about a year after she went into service, she got out of bed, and
walked, in her sleep, into the Haunted Room. She awoke to find herself
standing, cold and shivering, in the middle of the floor, and it was
some seconds before she realised where she was. Her horror, when she
did discover where she was, is not easily described. The room was
bathed in moonlight, and the beams, falling with noticeable
brilliancy on each piece of furniture the room contained, at once
riveted Letty's attention, and so fascinated her that she found
herself utterly unable to move. A terrible and most unusual silence
predominated everywhere, and although Letty's senses were wonderfully
and painfully on the alert, she could not catch the slightest sound
from any of the rooms on the landing.