Directly before the door, at about the center of the wall against which it was backed, stood something which loomed tall and dark, and which I took to be either a gigantic clothespress or a closet built into the room. Looking past the front of this obstruction, I saw one of the windows; the piece of furniture was therefore exhibited sidewise, in silhouette. I do not think that I had definitely thought of ghost stories before, and I know that ghosts had not been spoken of, but as I looked into this room, and reflected on the long series of persons who had occupied it, and on where they were now, and on all the stories that the room must have heard, there entered my mind thoughts of the supernatural. Having taken a step or two into the room, I was a little in advance of my three friends, and as these fancies came strongly to me, I spoke over my shoulder to one of them, who was at my right and a little behind me, saying, half playfully: "There ought to be ghosts in a room like this." Hardly had I spoken when without a sound, and swinging very slowly, the door of the large piece of furniture before me gently opened. My first idea was that the thing must be a closet, built against the wall, with a door at the back opening on a passageway, or into the next room, and that the little girl whom we had met downstairs had opened it from the other side and was coming in. I fully expected to see her enter. But she did not enter, for, as I learned presently, she was in the nursery at the time. After waiting for an instant to see who was coming, I began to realize that there was no one coming; that no one had opened the door; that, like an actor picking up a cue, the door had begun to swing immediately upon my saying the word "ghosts." The appropriateness of the coincidence was striking. I turned quickly to my friends, who were in conversation behind me, and asked: "Speaking of ghosts--did you see that door open?" It is my recollection that none of them had seen it. Certainly not more than one of them had, for I remember my feeling of disappointment that any one present should have missed so strange a circumstance. Some one may have asked what I had seen; at all events I was full of the idea, and, indicating the open door, I began to tell what I had seen, when--exactly as though the thing were done deliberately to circumstantiate my story--with the slow, steady movement of a heavy door pushed by a feeble hand, the other portal of the huge cabinet swung open. This time all four of us were looking. Presently, as we moved across the wide hall to go downstairs again, Bryan came from one of the other chambers, whither, I think, he had carried the young lady's supper on a tray. "Are there supposed to be any ghosts in this house?" I asked him. Bryan showed his white teeth in the semi-darkness. Whether he believed in ghosts or not, evidently he did not fear them. "Yes, sir," he said. "We're supposed to have a ghost here." "Where?"