Ghost Stories of an Antiquary | Page 4

kept it, as I said, and since that time I have tried
various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used, but
absolutely without result.
'So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson looked in again:
said he had felt very unwell, and told us we might go. He came rather
gingerly to his desk and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and
I suppose he thought he must have been dreaming: anyhow, he asked
no questions.
'That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was in school
again, much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my story
happened.
'We--McLeod and I--slept in a dormitory at right angles to the main
building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. There
was a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can't tell exactly, but
some time between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking
me. It was McLeod; and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in.
"Come," he said,--"come! there's a burglar getting in through
Sampson's window." As soon as I could speak, I said, "Well, why not
call out and wake everybody up?" "No, no," he said, "I'm not sure who
it is: don't make a row: come and look." Naturally I came and looked,
and naturally there was no one there. I was cross enough, and should
have called McLeod plenty of names: only--I couldn't tell why--it

seemed to me that there was something wrong--something that made
me very glad I wasn't alone to face it. We were still at the window
looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked him what he had heard or
seen. "I didn't hear anything at all," he said, "but about five minutes
before I woke you, I found myself looking out of this window here, and
there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and
looking in, and I thought he was beckoning." "What sort of man?"
McLeod wriggled. "I don't know," he said, "but I can tell you one
thing--he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over:
and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to
hear himself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive."
'We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually crept
back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. I
believe we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day.
'And next day Mr Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe no
trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one of the
oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact that neither
McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third person
whatever. Of course no questions were asked on the subject, and if they
had been, I am inclined to believe that we could not have made any
answer: we seemed unable to speak about it.
'That is my story,' said the narrator. 'The only approach to a ghost story
connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, an approach to
such a thing.'
* * * * *
The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional; but a
sequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been more than
one listener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year, or of
the next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.
One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds and ends in
the smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box. 'Now,'
he said, 'you know about old things; tell me what that is.' My friend

opened the little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an object
attached to it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles
to examine it more narrowly. 'What's the history of this?' he asked.
'Odd enough,' was the answer. 'You know the yew thicket in the
shrubbery: well, a year or two back we were cleaning out the old well
that used to be in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we
found?'
'Is it possible that you found a body?' said the visitor, with an odd
feeling of nervousness.
'We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word, we found
two.'
'Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there?
Was this thing found with them?'
'It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on