Previous to the occurrence of the following incident, I had been a disbeliever in Spirit-knocking. I had never heard any arguments which seemed to me even plausible, in defence of this phenomenon, as one supposed to be connected with the unseen world. It would have revolutionized my whole ideas of the illustrious dead, to conceive of departed poets, philosophers, statesmen, reformers, or divines, charmed by a Yankee or London "medium" to amuse idle gossips at a tea-party, or even when 2s. 6d. a head was paid for the aristocratic entertainment. It was equally difficult to recognise the resposive knocks on a table by any spirit, however intelligent, to the questions of a petulant sceptic, as a legitimate branch of the evidences of Christianity. No doubt "Satanic influence" in this case, as in many others, has proved an easy, ready-made way of accounting for what might seem to be otherwise so unaccountable; and we have heard orthodox divines speak as if it were unpardonable scepticism to doubt the presence, or to be blind to the deceitful purposes, of a wicked spirit on such occasions. Yet remembering the power, the character, and designs of Satan, as recorded in Scripture, with the mighty work of evil which he is represented as doing upon earth, it always appeared to us rather beneath even his contempt, and that of his principalities and powers, to spend their time and employ their faculties in telling perhaps pious, yet curious and inquisitive idlers the age of some respectable middle-aged, meditative curate, who formed one of the party, or the year in which some old dowager of their acquaintance had died. Yet all this communicativeness we have heard repeatedly attributed to the Devil. It never strikes people as a possible thing to speak evil against such dignities, or to be guilty of lying with reference to their conduct. Moreover, we never heard knocks at exhibitions of spiritualism, which seemed to us to be the result of any but a material cause, or to prove anything save the cleverness of some people, and the immense credulity of others.

Nevertheless things do happen which we may find it difficult to account for. Experience teaches us humility while it enlarges our knowledge. Who has not often been so puzzled by strange and "mysterious" events in his life, as to have been compelled to fall back upon the grand text from Hamlet, so familiar to puzzled brains and weak nerves, "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy!" The reader will judge for himself how far the following incident tends to increase or diminish faith in mysterious knocking. We seriously assure him that the facts are strictly accurate in all their details. The story must, however, be told, as all stories ought to be, in the first person.

Well then, some years ago, on an autumnal night, I sat along with an old friend and his sister, conversing round the fire, upon a subject which has not unfrequently been discussed by persons in similar circumstances, viz., the possible manifestation of spirits from the unseen world. The room in which we sat was a large, dimly-lighted drawing-room in an old family mansion. The night was quite an ideal one for ghost stories. The wind blew sullenly through the old trees which surrounded the house, and sometimes whistled through the house itself, as if searching everywhere for a victim of its anger. The rain fell in heavy showers which battered fiercely against the glass, followed ever and anon by a lull and silence, broken only by the tossing branches of the trees. My friend was, I admit, rather superstitious, and had a rare collection of curious stories which he told with wonderful power, of dreams, warnings, sights and sounds, with odd incidents which had been treasured up in his family as having happened to various members of it who had served in "the wars" by sea and land, and had been mingled up with the religious and political "troubles" of the earlier times. Hour after hour passed until we almost forgot where we were, and lost all idea of time, till, warned by one of the candles burning to its socket, we found it was past midnight and full time certainly to retire to bed. My friend's sister did so, while he himself accompanied me to my room to tell one other curious fact. By this time he had fairly succeeded in so far exciting my nervous system, that my sense of hearing seemed painfully acute, and I acknowledge having had a tendency to pause, listen, and ask with a low voice, "What was that?" "Did you not hear something?"

The reader may be disposed to doubt the worth of my evidence regarding the supernatural when in such a state of mind. But it will be seen how impossible it was to have been mistaken as to the presence of a sound which could not but at once arrest our attention. For, while thus conversing we suddenly heard a series of dull heavy knocks, at intervals of a second or so, and as if directed against the foundation of the house beneath our window. We both paused and listened, and looked into one another's faces, without speaking a word ; for my friend had told a striking story that evening of mysterious knocks, which had been heard half a century ago, before the death of a reckless and profane old ancestor of his. As we stood and listened, knock, knock, knock, was heard very distinctly. "You will smile at me," said my friend, "as if I of course believed that there was something ghostly in all this, but I rather suspect that these strange sounds may be caused by some of those more material agents who come before me as a magistrate. Does it not seem," he said, listening, and speaking in a whisper, "as if persons were trying to get into the dining-room below from the flower-garden?" But at this moment a tap was heard at our bedroom door. It was my friend's sister, begging of him to " come and see what a strange knocking meant which was outside of her bedroom." He ran out, but soon returned, looking very grave, and saying, "I heard it distinctly on the wall near the window in my sister's room." "Well," said I, "here is a capital opportunity of fairly testing the supernatural." "Which," he replied, "you are far too sceptical about;" but immediately added, "I have hit it! It is very ludicrous, after all. The servants, I am certain, are ironing clothes in the laundry, connected to this room by a wall. The sounds we hear are those of their irons on the table." "Not unlikely. Go and see." He came back in a few minutes, more perplexed than ever, saying, "All the servants, John tells me, are long ago retired to rest. Listen!"— knock, knock (then a pause of a few seconds)— knock. We opened the window and looked out, the wind, by the way, extinguishing our light. I heard the knocking distinctly, though it occurred at longer intervals. "Ah! my friend," said I, "some one, I guess, is cutting your trees for firewood near the bowling-green." "Perhaps so," he said, "but yet I never heard such very strange knocks, they seem so low and muffled and peculiar. And what an ' eerie' night! It is enough to make any man superstitious. The very clatter of the leaves, and the distant roar of the waves on the shore, and the whusch, whusch, of these old trees, the pitch darkness, and old Tory, with his occasional howl, as if he too heard something; and —Who goes there?" suddenly demanded my friend, with a loud voice, as he heard, or seemed to hear, footsteps on the gravel. "Stuff!" I said. "Don't, man, get frightened. It's all fancy." But my sentence was not finished when a rough voice replied from out the darkness, "It's I, sir!" "Peter?" "Yes!" Peter was the game-keeper. ''What are you about such a night as this? Anything wrong?" "Nothing, sir," replied Peter, "except those knocks." We both started. "What knocks, Peter ? Who makes them? Where are they?" "Oh, I don't know, sir, as how anything about them, only that I have heard them in my house. I thought it might be poachers, sir, and I hear them everywhere through the woods, but I can't nohow lay my hands on them."

We listened for about ten minutes. They had ceased. "If you hear them again, Peter, come and tell us." Peter not making his appearance for half an hour', and being disturbed no more, we bade good-night, and retired to rest, considerably puzzled,—my friend anything but happy. He looked really pained, as he said, "I can't think it is right to laugh at this." "Pray, don't judge," was my reply, "till after breakfast. It is wonderful what an effect a good breakfast, a fresh morning, daylight, a clear sky, not to speak of a clear intellect, have in accounting for such things. We shall see in the morning." As I lay trying to account for the knocks, I fell into a sound sleep, from which I was awoke only by the knock of the servant, with hot water, in the morning. "Master is not well," was the first information I received. "What is wrong, John?" I asked. "Did not sleep all night, sir; and headache, sir; kept awake I hear with strange knocks last night, and he don't like them sort of things, and no wonder, this is not the first time !" said John, shaking his head. He had been long in the family, and knew much of its secret history.