In the course of the preceding month the apparition of the Grey Monk had been seen on three different occasions after its first appearance to Bessie Ogden, each time by one or another of the domestics at the Chase. Bessie had been scouted and scolded both by Trant and Mrs. Burton, the housekeeper, till at length she was almost ready to believe that she must have been the victim of an optical delusion; and yet, strange to say, it was to no less a person than Trant himself that the Grey Monk next appeared. It was late at night—close upon midnight, in fact—when Trant, who had been some time in bed, but was not yet asleep, suddenly called to mind that he had inadvertently left his bunch of keys downstairs in the servants’ hall. On no account was it advisable that he should leave it there till morning; the other servants rose before he did, and there was no telling, with his keys at their command, in what way they might choose to take advantage of his oversight. It would never do to leave such a temptation in their way. Accordingly, he scrambled into a few clothes, thrust his feet into a pair of slippers, and started to go downstairs. He got as far as the gallery, and then stopped, suddenly frozen to the spot. There, pacing slowly to and fro by the light of a half-moon, which streamed in slantwise through the east window, with bowed head and hands clasped in front of him, was the Grey Monk! Trant’s jaw fell, and his eyes seemed to start from their orbits. A moment or two he stared; then he turned and, without a word or a sound, made his way back to his room, shaking in every limb like a huge jelly, and in mortal dread lest a ghostly hand should clutch him from behind. Next morning he sought an opportunity of unburdening his mind to Sir Gilbert, only to be snapped at and told that he was an old fool for his pains. “Let me hear of your having whispered a word about this idiotic rubbish, either in the servants’ hall or outside the house, and it will be worse for you,” said the Baronet, in his most minatory tone. “I’m ashamed of you, Trant, at your time of life.” For all that, Sir Gilbert did not rest till he had told Lady Pell, who in return confided to him his grandson’s adventure in the spinny, as related to her by the latter. “It is most annoying—most disturbing and annoying,” said the Baronet, “and I don’t at all know what to do in the matter. Perhaps the best thing will be to do nothing, but to keep on ignoring the whole business as I have done from the first. How is it the apparition never troubles me? I only wish it would! It would not escape me, I warrant you, till I had found out something definite about it. Let us hope, however, that we have heard the last of it for a long time to come.” But it was a hope not destined to be fulfilled.