I remember how one night, when we were living in the Master's
Lodge at Wellington College, I had gone to bed, and waking soon
afterwards heard a voice somewhere outside. I got out of bed, went
to the door, and looked out. Close to my door was an archway which
looked into the open gallery that ran round the big front hall,
giving access to the bedrooms. At the opposite end of the hall, in
the gallery, burnt a gaslight: to my horror I observed close to the
gas what seemed to me a colossal shrouded statue, made of a black
bronze, formless, silent, awful. I crept back to my bed, and there
shivered in an ecstasy of fear, till at last I fell asleep. There
was no statue there in the morning! I told my old nurse, after a day
or two of dumb dread, what I had seen. She laughed, and told me that
a certain Mrs. Holder, an elderly widow who was a dressmaker, had
been to see her, about some piece of work. They had turned out the
nursery lights and were going downstairs, when some question arose
about the stuff of the frock, whatever it was. Mrs.
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