‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ I answered, though I was far from believing it was nonsense, but I wanted to reassure her. I escorted her to her door, saw that her lamp was burning, then kissed her good-night and descended, and as I went down the last flight of stairs I turned suddenly, for I was sure I heard footsteps. And close behind me was a weird-looking man dressed in the costume of a gentleman of Charles II.’s reign. He appeared to be about sixty-five years of age. Long, grey, ringleted hair hung about his shoulders. His face wore an expression of awful anguish. For a moment I experienced a shock, but I quickly recovered myself and tried to grasp him, but he was as unsubstantial as the air, and the uncanniness of the whole business made me involuntarily shrink back. Then he raised his hands, and drawing down the large lace collar from his neck, he bared his throat, showing me a tremendous gash that had severed the windpipe, and from which the blood seemed to pour in a stream. It was a fearsome sight, I must confess, and I had never before in the whole course of my existence experienced such an utterly ‘gone’ and helpless feeling as I did in the presence of that supernatural visitant, and before I had pulled myself together, as the saying is, the weird spectre raised his hand, pointed upward with an extended finger, and in an instant had disappeared. I returned to my library and flung myself into a chair, and I asked myself seriously whether the incidents of the last quarter of an hour were not the result of some morbid condition of my own brain. That is to say, I was disposed to doubt whether my daughter had really rushed pale and fainting into the room, as I have described, or whether it wasn’t a figment of my own imagination. But here let me say that I had always been regarded as an unimaginative person, with, as I have before said, a scientific mind, which required hard, stern facts to convince it. How was it then I had come to see visions? I asked myself this question, and mentally argued the whole thing out, trying to explain away the vision; but, firstly, there were the mysterious hand and the sliding panel, and now here was a man of a bygone age who had horrified me by showing me his throat gashed, and rent, and bleeding. I don’t know really how long I sat revolving the problem in my brain, but I do know that I crept up to bed at last feeling terribly fagged mentally and physically. I slept far beyond my usual hour the following morning. My family had already breakfasted, but Phyllis came and sat with me, and recounted her previous night’s experiences. There was an unwonted paleness in her pretty face and a scared look in her eyes. I felt it wise not to say anything to her about what I myself had seen; but, moved by a sudden impulse, I said I was going up to London by the next train and would take her with me.