"After breakfast next morning, Krantz listened to my account of the midnight adventure in respectful silence.
"'Then!' he said, when I had finished, 'you attribute the hauntings in the valley to the excavations of the geologist Leblanc and his party, at the cromlech six weeks ago?'
"'And you think, if Leblanc and Cie were persuaded to restore and re-inter the remains they found and carted away, that the disturbances would cease?'
"'Then,' Krantz exclaimed, banging his clenched fist on the table, 'I will approach them on the subject at once!'
"He did so, and, after much correspondence, eventually received per goods train, a Tate's sugar cube-box, containing a number of bones of the missing link pattern, which he at once had taken to the Druids' circle. As soon as they were buried and the marks of the recent excavations obliterated, the hauntings in the houses ceased."
"Killington Grange," near Northampton, was once haunted, so my friend Mr Pope informs me, by a chair, and the following is Mr Pope's own experience of the hauntings, as nearly as possible as he related it to me:--
"Some years ago, shortly before Christmas, I received an invitation from my old friend, William Achrow.
"'DEAR POPE' (he wrote)--'My wife and I are entertaining a few guests here this Christmas, and are most anxious to include you among them.
"'When I tell you that Sir Charles and Lady Kirlby are coming, and that we can offer you something startling in the way of a ghost, you will, I know, need no further inducement to join our party.--Yours, etc.,
"Achrow was a cunning fellow; he knew I would go a thousand miles to meet the Kirlbys, who had been my greatest friends in Ireland, and that ghosts invariably drew me like magnets. At that time I was a bachelor; I had no one to think about but myself, and as I felt pretty sure of a fresh theatrical engagement in the early spring, I was happily careless with regard to expenditure--and to people of limited incomes like myself, staying in country houses means expenditure, a great deal more expenditure than a week or so at an ordinary hotel.
"However, as I have observed, I felt pretty secure just then; I could afford a couple of 'fivers,' and would gladly get rid of them to see once more my dear old friends, Sir Charles and Lady K----. Accordingly, I accepted Achrow's invitation, and the afternoon of December 23rd saw me snugly ensconced in a first-class compartment _en route_ for Castle Street, Northampton. Now, although I am, not unnaturally, perhaps, prejudiced in favour of Ireland and everything that is Irish, I must say I do not think the Emerald Isle shows her best in winter, when the banks of fair Killarney are shorn of their vivid colouring, and the whole country from north to south, and east to west, is carpeted with mud. No, the palm of wintry beauty must assuredly be given to the English Midlands--the Midlands with their stolid and richly variegated woodlands, and their pretty undulating meadows, clad in fleecy garments of the purest, softest, and most glittering snow. It was a typical Midland Christmas when I got to Northampton and took my place in the luxurious closed carriage Achrow had sent to meet me.