The Argosy — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

42 On the Supernatural. So I remained, not at all sorry to escape turning out that bitterly cold night. But even under the new arrangement, rest in that house for me was out of the question after my late experience. In the morning, Mrs. went to the room at my request, to enquire of her husband how he had slept. Not at all, he answered her ; there had been most ‘extraordinary noises throughout the night, which he believed proceeded from the water-pipes. But as I had never known water-pipes to breathe, shriek, or wrestle, I did not accept his solution of the mystery. The Doctor did not make his appearance at breakfast. The servant in waiting said her master had taken a cup of tea in haste, and was gone out to see a patient. But I strongly suspected he had gone out to avoid meeting me, and the questions I should have been sure to put to him. I had to be out again on my way to the lawyers before he returned; and the subject was never after alluded to between us. But when I was leaving, in the afternoon, and he had again gone out, his wife spoke to me. “I will candidly tell you,” she said, “that the servants say they hear all sorts of noises, and that they are quite sure the house is haunted ! Of course, we are not supposed to believe it, and, therefore, only laugh at their stories.” ‘““Were I you I should leave the house,” I said. _ “We cannot,” she answered, shaking her head. ‘Unhappily we have taken a lease of it, and had carpets and other furniture made to fit it. We must remain in it.” And remain in it they did, for several years. Though how they could do so is to me a marvel; for, apart from all this, it is the most gloomy and depressing house possible to conceive. Perhaps they shut that room up: I don’t know. About twenty years have elapsed now since the occurrence of what I have related, yet it is all as fresh in my memory as though it had taken place but yesterday. I have simply stated the facts as they occurred, without exaggeration of any kind, adhering only to the strict truth. As before remarked, most people profess to look upon a belief in anything supernatural as a positive weakness: but I am perfectly satisfied in my own mind of a very close connection between the seen and the unseen, and that the disturbances in that house were wholly due to supernatural causes. Unhappily it has not been my only experience. Some years later I was staying at Ilfracombe, and while there received a letter from one of my sisters, who was then abroad, telling me of the serious illness of her husband. He was a fine, strong man of upwards of six feet, of whose life anyone would have taken a lease. His was one of those bright and genial natures one delights to meet, full of kindness and sympathy, COMIC OOlKS.CO