The elevation of Bellosguardo sloped from the villa north and east, and this declivity was occupied by a podere of some dozen acres, on which grew grape-vines, olive and fig trees. Every morning, about ten o'clock, the peasants on the estate would come in loaded with grapes, which they piled up on a large table in the reception-hall on the ground floor. We ate them by handfuls, but were never able to finish them. Between times we would go out among the fruit trees and devour fresh figs, luscious with purple pulp. I had three or four rooms to myself at the western extremity of the house; they were always cool on the hottest days. There I was wont to retire to pursue my literary labors; I was still writing works on conchology. My sister Una had rooms on the ground floor, adjoining the chapel. They were haunted by the ghost of a nun, and several times the candle which she took in there at night was moved by invisible hands from its place and set down elsewhere. Ghostly voices called to us, and various unaccountable noises were heard now and then, both within and without the house; but we children did not mind them, not having been bred in the fear of spirits. Indeed, at the instance of Mrs. Browning, who was often with us, we held spirit seances, Miss Shepard being the medium, though she mildly protested. Long communications were written down, but the sceptics were not converted, nor were the believers discouraged. "I discern in the alleged communications from my wife's mother," wrote my father, "much of her own beautiful fancy and many of her preconceived ideas, although thinner and weaker than at first hand. They are the echoes of her own voice, returning out of the lovely chambers of her heart, and mistaken by her for the tones of her mother."