"It appeared to me (1) to be produced outside my room; (2) to be on a higher level; and (3) to be moving in the direction of my bed--_i.e._, going as from No. 5 past No. 4, in which I was, towards No. 3. I at once jumped out of bed, opened my door and looked out. I saw nothing, and the noise stopped. I then struck a light, and found that it was only 4.45. I lay awake till I heard the servants obviously moving about, and then went to sleep again. At breakfast I asked, 'Has anybody ever heard this kind of noise?' reproducing it as well as I could by a series of thumps on the table. 'Oh yes,' was the answer, 'that is what we call the 'limping' or 'scuttering' noise. Of course I had heard the phrases used, but thought they referred to two separate noises. I had also formed quite distinct ideas as to the kind of noises these epithets were intended to describe--both entirely different from the kind of noise I had heard--and I showed what I meant. 'Oh no,' said Miss Freer, 'what you heard is what we have been calling indiscriminately the _limping_ or _scuttering_ noise, and we have not heard the kinds of noise these words suggested to you.' I emphasise this as showing clearly that I cannot have been expecting to hear the particular noise in question. "The next thing was to account for the noise, if possible, and we spent some time experimenting. First of all the servants were interrogated as to whether any of them had been moving about at 4.45. Answer, 'No.' Next we asked who got up first. This was a maid who slept in X, and went into Y to call the kitchenmaid, who slept there. To do so she had, of course, to go through the narrow room which was over part of my bedroom. "This, she said, was a good bit later than 4.45. But we thought it well to make her go from X to Y while I lay down on my bed and listened. We made her walk backwards and forwards, both with her slippers on and also in her stocking soles. I and some of the others who came into my room heard her quite distinctly. But (1) the noise of her steps was in a different place--near my window, and exactly in the line of her progress; (2) it was an entirely different kind of noise. She walked now fast, and now slowly, but both footsteps seemed always of the same weight; and (3), and this, to my mind, was most important, we heard her quite distinctly going from X to Y, and back again from Y to X and could tell in which direction she was moving. Now, the noise which I had heard only went in the one direction, _i.e._, parallel to the maid's outward progress. I did not hear anything going in the other direction. I was entirely wakened by the noise which I had heard, and, as I have said, I continued to listen intently for some considerable time, and yet I heard nothing. "In short, alike from its apparent _locus_, from its quality, and from the direction of its movements, I am convinced that the noise which I heard was not caused by any of the servants moving about upstairs.