To look at, it was much the same as one of them, and they got into scrapes being supposed to go up to the dormitories at wrong hours, and that. Then the dominie, counting heads, would find too many boys in class, and when he counted again they were right: he could not make it out. But the thing that began the trouble was a scribbling on the exercise-books and writing copies and that, scribbling done in pencil, not real writing, but W.W. or M.M., like this"—tracing with his finger on the table—"the same over and over again. I saw some of it myself. Nobody could make out who did it; and at last Mr. Grant locked the books in his own desk; but they were scribbled on even there. He got very angry, and vowed he would flog the whole school, from the senior lad down to the youngest, unless the one that played the trick would come forward and confess. And then there started up a boy who was a stranger and not one of the scholars, and went up to the master's desk with a copy-book in his hand. The dominie was about to take it from him; but no sooner were they face to face than Mr. Grant fell down in a fit, and that before ever he touched the book. And in the confusion that followed, the stranger boy disappeared, and no one could say where he came from or how he went. That was the biggest pliskie that was played. Those who came here after, have just seen him going through the rooms to vanish in some shut up place, and sometimes they have heard cries and knockings, but all the appearances have been much the same."

III

My last letter ended with McGregor's narrative, did it not, dear Susan?—and now you write to say you are interested, and ask me what more has happened. No more apparitions have happened. I have not seen the boy again, nor has Kenneth seen him: he says he shall not, he is not so made; and, if a healthy scepticism is any safeguard, I imagine he will not. But on the other hand, no eager credulity could in my case have made visible that of which I did not know.

I believe I told you Ken decided to sell the chapel room, and have it taken away. It is needed for some War object, I am not sure what; so for every reason we are glad to have it go. The contractor's men have been busy all this week taking the timbers to pieces as if it were a child's puzzle, and putting it, not in a box, but on a couple of big lorries. Now they are at work upon the brick foundations and the floor; and the door which led into it from the drawing-room is to have glass panels, and be our way out into the garden.

Only one other event is worth naming since I wrote. That horrible old husband of poor Mrs. Wilding's has been taken ill, and I believe the doctor thinks seriously of his state. He hates any sort of change, Mrs. Wilding says, and he excited himself over hearing the chapel room was to be taken away. Imagine this: the first night after the work began, he crawled, nobody knows how, out of the kitchen and through the hall and drawing-room, and himself undid that door. Then I suppose he fell down the six steps, for he was found at the foot of them in the morning, only half alive. It is almost incredible that he could have done it without help. Since then he has had two epileptic fits, and talks the strangest nonsense, so his wife tells us. I wish he could be taken to a hospital—for her sake, poor thing, as well as ours. Ken is going to speak to the doctor, and see what can be arranged.

You ask about Tom.