"Have the tenants had any particular reasons for not remaining on there--if I may be so bold as to inquire?" "All people have reasons to offer, but what they offer you are not supposed to receive as genuine." I could get no more from him than this. "I think, sir, if I were you I would not go down to Fernwood till after November was out." "But," said I, "I want the shooting." "Ah, to be sure--the shooting, ah! I should have preferred if you could have waited till December began." "That would not suit me," I said, and so the matter ended. When we were settled in, we occupied the right wing of the house. The left or west wing was but scantily furnished and looked cheerless, as though rarely tenanted. We were not a large family, my wife and myself alone; there was consequently ample accommodation in the east wing for us. The servants were placed above the kitchen, in a portion of the house I have not yet described. It was a half-wing, if I may so describe it, built on the north side parallel with the upper arm of the western limb of the hall and the [Symbol: H]. This block had a gable to the north like the wings, and a broad lead valley was between them, that, as I learned from the agent, had to be attended to after the fall of the leaf, and in times of snow, to clear it. Access to this valley could be had from within by means of a little window in the roof, formed as a dormer. A short ladder allowed anyone to ascend from the passage to this window and open or shut it. The western staircase gave access to this passage, from which the servants' rooms in the new block were reached, as also the untenanted apartments in the old wing. And as there were no windows in the extremities of this passage that ran due north and south, it derived all its light from the aforementioned dormer window. One night, after we had been in the house about a week, I was sitting up smoking, with a little whisky-and-water at my elbow, reading a review of an absurd, ignorantly written book on New South Wales, when I heard a tap at the door, and the parlourmaid came in, and said in a nervous tone of voice: "Beg your pardon, sir, but cook nor I, nor none of us dare go to bed." "Why not?" I asked, looking up in surprise. "Please, sir, we dursn't go into the passage to get to our rooms." "Whatever is the matter with the passage?" "Oh, nothing, sir, with the passage. Would you mind, sir, just coming to see? We don't know what to make of it." I put down my review with a grunt of dissatisfaction, laid my pipe aside, and followed the maid. She led me through the hall, and up the staircase at the western extremity. On reaching the upper landing I saw all the maids there in a cluster, and all evidently much scared. "Whatever is all this nonsense about?" I asked. "Please, sir, will you look? We can't say."