An account

Unfortunately no letter can be found with any account of the actual incident. All that has been discovered I have transcribed on the opposite page. The details I had quite forgotten. The passage does not say that Miss Reed went to her uncle's house, but I feel sure that she was sum1 See Vol. i., pp. 554-6. moned thither ; indeed, the particulars here recorded could hardly have been learned by her anywhere else. I fear this is a lame and impotent conclusion. [Copy.] ' Clifton, March 12th, 1869. ' I send you the sequel of my ghost story — if it is to be considered as a sequel at all. I don't know whether I told you that I asked Miss R. if her ghostly visitor resembled anyone she knew, and she said the only one she could think of whom he was like was her uncle, but he was stout and the appearance was thin. At the end of last week she heard, unexpectedly, that her uncle a few weeks before had been taken seriously ill, that he had been exceedingly reduced, and that he was then lying at death's door. (To-day I hear that he is dead.) Further, some small property that he had he had formerly left to Miss Reed. Some little while ago, however, an aunt of Miss R.'s came to take care of him, and induced him to alter his will in her favour, at any rate so far as life interest was concerned. When he fell ill, he became much agitated at the injustice he thought he had done Miss R., and expressed himself with strong self-accusation, though, like many weak people, he put off a second alteration from day to day. Whether one of these fits of distress took place at the time of the so-called appearance, and there was really, any connection between them, cannot now be traced, and the story must be left with its possibilities unsolved.' P.S. — Miss Reed gave up her house some 10 years ago or more. She was afterwards reduced to considerable distress by sickness, &c. I have certainly heard nothing of her for 8 years, and have quite lost all trace of her. (655) From Mrs. Mainwaring, of Knowles, Ardingly, Hayward's Heath, (the narrator of case 370,) who sent us a less detailed account in August, 1884. March 14th, 1885. My aunt, Margaret Saulez, and my mother, then Mary Saulez, slept together ; and the rules of the house were strict. One most forbidden thing was noise in bedrooms, or talking after going to bed. But the two young girls one night went on chattering and laughing after they were in bed, and suddenly the door opened and my grandmother came in. She just came and looked at them sorrowfully, as if she was vexed, and without speaking left the room. I do not remember, at this moment, whether they spoke to her then ; however, they felt so grieved at her look and silence that they both jumped out of bed and followed her quickly to her door, but found it locked, and she would not answer — as they thought — when they begged her to forgive them. My grandfather woke, and found her by his side in a deep swoon.i They sent for the doctor, and he said that he was only just in time to save her life, as she had evidently been in that state some time ; and a few hours after a child was born. This is the story familiar to me from my mother's lips since my childhood, and I am as sure of its truth as one can be of anything one does not know oneself. The elder sister, my aunt, died soon after.