I should say that every human being our curate had ever known or met, or heard of, was brought into that story. There were simply hundreds of them. Every five seconds he would introduce into the tale a completely fresh collection of characters accompanied by a brand new set of incidents. This was the sort of story it was:- "Well, then, my uncle went into the garden, and got his gun, but, of course, it wasn't there, and Scroggins said he didn't believe it." "Didn't believe what? Who's Scroggins?" "Scroggins! Oh, why he was the other man, you know--it was his wife." "WHAT was his wife--what's SHE got to do with it?" "Why, that's what I'm telling you. It was she that found the hat. She'd come up with her cousin to London--her cousin was my sister- in-law, and the other niece had married a man named Evans, and Evans, after it was all over, had taken the box round to Mr. Jacobs', because Jacobs' father had seen the man, when he was alive, and when he was dead, Joseph--" "Now look here, never you mind Evans and the box; what's become of your uncle and the gun?" "The gun! What gun?" "Why, the gun that your uncle used to keep in the garden, and that wasn't there. What did he do with it? Did he kill any of these people with it--these Jacobses and Evanses and Scrogginses and Josephses? Because, if so, it was a good and useful work, and we should enjoy hearing about it." "No--oh no--how could he?--he had been built up alive in the wall, you know, and when Edward IV spoke to the abbot about it, my sister said that in her then state of health she could not and would not, as it was endangering the child's life. So they christened it Horatio, after her own son, who had been killed at Waterloo before he was born, and Lord Napier himself said--" "Look here, do you know what you are talking about?" we asked him at this point. He said "No," but he knew it was every word of it true, because his aunt had seen it herself. Whereupon we covered him over with the tablecloth, and he went to sleep. And then Uncle told us a story. Uncle said his was a real story. THE GHOST OF THE BLUE CHAMBER (My Uncle's Story) "I don't want to make you fellows nervous," began my uncle in a peculiarly impressive, not to say blood-curdling, tone of voice, "and if you would rather that I did not mention it, I won't; but, as a matter of fact, this very house, in which we are now sitting, is haunted." "You don't say that!" exclaimed Mr. Coombes. "What's the use of your saying I don't say it when I have just said it?" retorted my uncle somewhat pettishly. "You do talk so foolishly. I tell you the house is haunted. Regularly on Christmas Eve the Blue Chamber [they called the room next to the nursery the 'blue chamber,' at my uncle's, most of the toilet service being of that shade] is haunted by the ghost of a sinful man--a man who once killed a Christmas wait with a lump of coal."