"My visit," continued he, "lasted about a fortnight, during the whole of which period, at intervals, the rapping was audible in different parts of the house. It appeared to me however--I watched attentively--to come with the greatest frequency from the hall. Thence it sounded as if an immense mallet, muffled in feathers or cotton, was striking heavily on the floor. The noise was generally heard between twelve and two. The blows sometimes followed each other with great rapidity; at other times more slowly and leisurely. One singularity of the visitation was this--that in whatever part of the house you might be listening, the noise seemed to come from a remote direction. If you heard the blows in the drawing-room, they appeared to be given in the library. And if you heard them in the library, they seemed to be falling in the nursery. The invisible workman was busy always _at a distance_. Another feature was its locomotive powers. It moved with the most extraordinary rapidity. Nothing that I could think of--mice, rats, drains, currents of air, dropping of water--would explain it. If the noise had been caused by the agency of any one of these causes, it would have been heard in the day time. _It never was_. Night was the season, and the only season in which the ponderous, but invisible, mallet was wielded. Nothing could exceed the kindness with which I was treated. No words can do justice to the thoughtful and delicate hospitality which I received. But I declare to you this mysterious visitation was too much for me. It was impossible to listen to it at night without depression. Perhaps my nerves were unstrung. The tone of my system might be enfeebled. The fault, I dare say, was in myself. But to lie awake, as I often did, during long hours from pain, and to hear this muffled, hollow, droning, mysterious noise passing from room to room about the house--to listen to it now above me, now below me, now quite close to my chamber door, and in a couple of seconds rising up from the very center of the hall, and to be all the while utterly unable to account for it, fevered me. I curtailed my visit; but the nursing and kindness I received are graven in my memory. Bearing all these matters in remembrance," said the major firmly; "recollecting my own strange experience, how can I discredit Mr. Ancelôt's narrative? _I firmly believe it_. We are surrounded by mysteries. The invisible world enshrouds us. Spirits have their regards intently fixed on us, and a very slight vail divides us. Spurn the vulgar error," said the old veteran stoutly, "that a soldier must be a scoffer. I remember the holy record, and its thrilling declaration; 'We are a spectacle unto angels and unto men.'" A pause ensued, which neither of the listeners cared to terminate. At length he spoke again. "The dews are falling. The last pleasure-boat has landed its fair freight upon the Denne. The breeze from the sea blows keenly, and warns us elderlies to think of our