Assuming the command which was his right, my father ordered all hands to bed so authoritatively that none ventured to gainsay the edict. In the morning he made light to the girls and boys of the whole affair, fairly laughing it out of court, and, breakfast over, sent them off to school and academy. Then he summoned our mother, my sister, and myself to a private conference in “the chamber.” He began business without preliminaries. Standing on the rug, his back to the fire, his hands behind him, in genuine English-squirely style, he said, as nearly as I can recall his words: “It is useless to try to hide from ourselves any longer that there is something wrong with this house. I have known it for a year and more. In fact, we had not lived here three months before I was made aware that some mystery hung about it. “One windy November night I had gone to bed as usual, before your mother finished her book.” He glanced smilingly at her. Her proclivity for reading into the small hours was a family joke. “It was a stormy night, as I said, and I lay with closed eyes, listening to the wind and rain, and thinking over next day’s business, when somebody touched my feet. Somebody—not something! Hands were laid lightly upon them, were lifted and laid in the same way upon my knees, and so on until they rested more heavily on my chest, and I felt that some one was looking into my face. Up to that moment I had not a doubt that it was your mother. Like the careful wife she is, she was arranging the covers over me to keep out stray draughts. So, when she bent to look into my face, I opened my eyes to thank her. “She was not there! I was gazing into the empty air. The pressure was removed as soon as I lifted my eyelids. I raised myself on my elbow and looked toward the fireplace. Your mother was deep in her book, her back toward me. I turned over without sound, and looked under the bed from the side next the wall. The firelight and lamplight shone through, unobstructed. “I speak of this now for the first time. I have never opened my lips about it, even to your mother, until this moment. But it has happened to me, not once, nor twice, nor twenty—but fifty times—maybe more. It is always the same thing. The hands—I have settled in my mind that they are those of a small woman or of a child, they are so little and light—are laid on my feet, then on my knees, and travel upward to my chest. There they rest for a few seconds, sometimes for a whole minute—I have timed them—and _something_ looks into my face and is gone! “How do I account for it? I don’t account for it at all! I know that it _is_! That is all. Shakespeare said, long before I was born, that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’ This is one of them. You can see, now, daughter”—turning to me—“why I was not incredulous when you brought your ghost upon the scene. I have been on the lookout for what our spiritualistic friends call ‘further manifestations.’”