“Yes, Ellen it’s hard, and all wrong, but we are wandering away from your ghosts, and you know I am going to take notes.  So begin.”

“Well, Miss, I was a sort of companion or maid to a blind lady in my own town.  I slept in a little room just across the landing from hers, so as to always be within reach of her.  I was just going to bed, when she called for me to come in and see if there was something in the room—­something alive, she thought, that had been hopping, hopping all around her bed, and frightened her dreadfully, poor thing, for, you remember, she was stone blind, Miss, which made it worse.  So I hurried in and I shook the curtains, looked behind the bureau and under the bed, and tried everywhere for whatever might be hopping around, but could find nothing and heard not a sound.  While I was there all was still.  Then I went into my room again, and left the door open, as I thought Miss Lacy would feel more comfortable about it, and I was hardly in my bed when she called again and screamed out with fear, for It was hopping round the bed.  She said I must go down-stairs and bring a candle.  So I had to go down-stairs to the pantry all alone and get the candle.  Then I searched as before, but found nothing—­not a thing.  Well, my dear, I went into my room and kept my candle lighted this time.  The third time she called me she was standing on her pillow, shivering with fright, and begged me to bring the light.  It was sad, because she was stone blind.  She told me how It went hopping around the room, with its legs tied like.  And after looking once more and finding nothing, she said I’d have to sleep in the bed with her and bring a chair near the bed and put the lighted candle on it.  For a long time we kept awake, and watched and listened, but nothing happened, nothing appeared.  We kept awake as long as we could, but at last our eyes grew very heavy, and the lady seemed to feel more easy.  So I snuffed out the candle.  Out It hopped and kept a jumping on one leg like from one side to the other.  We were so much afraid we covered our faces; we dreaded to see It, so we hid our eyes under the sheet, and she clung on to me all shaking; she felt worse because she was blind.

“We fell asleep at daylight, and when I told Monk, the butler, he said it was a corpse, sure—­a corpse whose legs had been tied to keep them straight and the cords had not been taken off, the feet not being loosened.  Why my own dear mother, that’s dead many a year (Heaven bless her departed spirit!)—­she would never tell a word that was not true—­she saw a ghost hopping in that way, tied-like, jumping around a bed—­blue as a blue bag; just after the third day she was buried, and my mother (the Lord bless her soul!) told me the sons went to her grave and loosened the cords and she never came back any more.  Isn’t it awful?  And, bedad, Miss, it’s every word true.  I can tell you of a young man I knew who looked into a window at midnight (after he had been playing cards, Miss, gambling with the other boys) and saw something awful strange, and was turned by ghosts into a shadow.”