I began to fear now that Rislip was to prove a curse instead of a blessing to me; and, depressed by an anxiety I had never known before, I caught the next train out. Phyllis, of course, accompanied me, and we reached Rislip about ten o’clock at night. I learnt that my wife had had a fit. The cause nobody knew, but she told me. She had been sitting in the dining-room alone, when she felt a draught as I had done. Then to her horror she saw a deathly-white hand sliding the panel back. Suddenly a quaintly-dressed man, with a haggard, anguished face, appeared before her, and, baring his throat, displayed it gashed and bleeding as he had done to me. She was conscious of uttering a loud, shrill scream of terror. Then all was blank until she awoke to find a doctor attending her. As she finished telling me her story, she expressed great anxiety lest her brain was giving way, and she only grew calm when I assured her that I had seen what she had seen, and that Phyllis had also met the ghostly man on the stairs. My medical friend’s theory would not now hold water, because my wife had been ignorant of my own and Phyllis’s experiences, so that she was not influenced by a recital which might have set up a morbid set of conditions in her own brain. Up to this time I had always regarded spiritualism so-called as abominable quackery, and it always made me angry when I heard of the antics and silly pranks which the spirits called up at the _séances_ the professional humbugs indulged in. But now I myself had seen a spirit, my daughter had also seen it, and my wife had seen it. We all three claimed to be people of common sense, free from morbid taint, and not given to conjuring up bogeys out of every shadow that came in our path. And yet it seemed to me that the spirit that had made itself manifest unto us had behaved in a very idiotic way, for if it had a grievance why did it try to frighten us all to death. Of course, the matter was too serious to be pooh-poohed with a scornful laugh and a sceptical toss of the head. The statement of three persons, not quite fools, could not be ignored. I began to feel deeply interested in the psychological problem that was suggested to me, and after much cogitation I mentally asked myself whether the ghostly visitor had any particular reason for pointing upward. Anyway, I was prompted to try and find out, and made my way to the top of the house, where there was a range of garrets. Here I began to pry about in a very inquisitive way, and after long and patient searching for I knew not what, I chanced to strike a portion of the wall in a back garret with a stick I carried, and was rather astonished to find that it gave out a hollow sound. I rapped it again. The same sound; but a yard on either side and there was solidity.