not heard hitherto) described by former witnesses as
"explosive." I know of nothing quite like it. I have heard the
Portsmouth guns when at a place eight miles away; the sound was
like that, but did not convey the same impression of distance. I
heard it, at intervals, during half-an-hour. Miss Moore is a
very light sleeper, but she did not awake. At six I got up and
went through my room to the dressing-room door (No. 6), after a
sound that seemed especially near. It was so near, that though I
thought it quite unlikely under the circumstances, I wanted to
satisfy myself that no one was playing jokes on Mr. C----, whose
room was close by. The house was deadly still. I could hear the
clocks ticking on the stairs. As I stood, the sound came again.
It might have been caused by a very heavy fall of snow from a
high roof--not sliding, but percussive. Miss Moore had wakened
up and heard it too.

(_N.B._--We afterwards found that, as the roof is flat, the snow
is cleared away daily.)

Mr. W----, an utter sceptic, he declares, left early; then we
all went for a walk. We spent the whole afternoon making
experiments. Miss Moore or my maid or I, as having heard the
noises, shut ourselves up in the room whence they were heard, or
stood in the right places on hall or staircase.

The experimental noises made were as follows:--

1. Banging with poker or shovel as hard as possible on every
part of the big iron stove in the hall; kicking it, hitting it
with sticks (as Miss Moore and I persisted that the first noise