Addison?” said the Major as I entered, “have you got the facts you were looking for?”

“Some of them,” I replied, and opening my notebook I turned to the pages containing notes made that morning.

The Major watched me with intense curiosity, and almost impatiently awaited my next words. The servant having left the room:

“In the first place,” I began, glancing at the notes, “I have been consulting certain local records in the town, and I find that in the year 1646 a certain Dame Pryce occupied a cabin which, according to one record, ‘stood close beside unto ye Lowe Fennel.’”

“That is, close beside this house?” interjected the Major excitedly.

[39]

[39]

“Exactly,” I said. “She attracted the attention of one of the many infamous wretches who disfigure the history of that period: Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witch-Finder General. This was a witch-ridden age, and the man Hopkins was one of those who fattened on the credulity of his fellows, receiving a fee of twenty shillings for every unhappy woman discovered and convicted of witchcraft. Poor Pryce was ‘swum’ in a local pond (a test whereby the villain Hopkins professed to discover if the woman were one of Satan’s band, or otherwise) and burnt alive in Reigate market-place on September 23, 1646.”

“By God!” said the Major, who had not attempted to commence his lunch, “that’s a horrible story!”

“It is one of the many to the credit of Matthew Hopkins,” I replied; “but, without boring you with the details of this woman’s examination and so forth, I may say that what interests me most in the case is the date—September 23.”

“Why? I don’t follow you.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a hiatus in the history of the place after that, except that even in those early days it evidently suffered from the reputation of being haunted; but without troubling[40] about the interval, consider the case of Seager, which you yourself related to me. Was it not in the month of August that he was done to death here?”

[40]

“By Gad!” cried the Major, his face growing redder than ever, “you’re right!—and hang it all, Addison! it was in September—last September—that the Ords cleared out!”

“I remember your mentioning,” I 

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