CHAPTER I -- THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE
Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the
conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is
the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There
was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of
any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway
station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood
outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train
running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was
utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly
commonplace people- -and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say
that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.
The manner of my lighting on it was this.
I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at
the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine
who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to
suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and
had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the
sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the
usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at all;--upon which
question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would
have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had,
through the night--as that opposite man always has--several legs too many, and all of
them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected
of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and
taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and
bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them, under a
general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat
staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a
perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.
It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had out-watched the
paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at
once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-
traveller and said:
"I BEG your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me"? For, really, he
appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that
was a liberty.
