"They opposed this proposition earnestly, and begged me not to think of if; besides, they said if any thing was to happen to my lord, how should they answer for it; but as I insisted, the women went to call the members of the family who were lighting fires and preparing beds in some rooms on the same floor as they occupied themselves. When they came they were as earnest against the indulgence of my wishes as the women had been. Still I insisted. "'Are you afraid,' I said, 'to go yourselves in the haunted chambers?' "'No,' they answered. 'We are the custodians of the castle and have to keep the rooms clean and well aired lest the furniture be spoiled--my lord talks always of removing it, but it has never been removed yet--but we would not sleep up there for all the world.' "'Then it is the upper floors that are haunted?' "'Yes, especially the long room, no one could pass a night there; the last that did is in a lunatic asylum now at Warsaw,' said the custodian. "'What happened to him?' "'I don't know,' said the man; 'he was never able to tell.' "'Who was he?' I asked. "'He was a lawyer. My lord did business with him; and one day he was speaking of this place, and saying that it was a pity he was not at liberty to pull it down and sell the materials; but he cannot, because it is family property and goes with the title; and the lawyer said he wished it was his, and that no ghost should keep him out of it. My lord said that it was easy for any one to say that who knew nothing about it, and that he must suppose the family had not abandoned such a fine place without good reasons. But the lawyer said it was some trick, and that it was coiners, or robbers, who had got a footing in the castle, and contrived to frighten people away that they might keep it to themselves; so my lord said if he could prove that he should be very much obliged to him, and more than that, he would give him a great sum--I don't know how much. So the lawyer said, he would; and my lord wrote to me that he was coming to inspect the property, and I was to let him do any thing he liked. "'Well, he came, and with him his son, a fine young man and a soldier. They asked me all sorts of questions, and went over the castle and examined every part of it. From what they said, I could see that they thought the ghost was all nonsense, and that I and my family were in collusion with the robbers or coiners. However, I did not care for that, my lord knew that the castle had been haunted before I was born.