continued, smiling at his excitement, “that it was a very hot month?”

“It was.”

“From a mere word dropped by one of the witnesses at the trial of poor Pryce I have gathered that the month in which she was convicted of practising witchcraft in her cabin adjoining Low Fennel (as it stood in those days) was a tropically hot month also.”

Major Dale stared at me uncomprehendingly.

“I’m out of my depth, Addison—wading hopelessly. What the devil has the heat to do with the haunting?”

“To my mind everything. I may be wrong, but I think that if the glass were to fall to-night, there would be no repetition of the trouble.”

[41]

[41]

“You mean that it’s only in very hot weather—”

“In phenomenally hot weather, Major—the sort that we only get in England perhaps once in every ten years. For the glass to reach the altitude at which it stands at present, in two successive summers, is quite phenomenal, as you know.”

“It’s phenomenal for it to reach that point at all,” said the Major, mopping his perspiring forehead; “it’s simply Indian, simply Indian, sir, by the Lord Harry!”

“Another inquiry,” I continued, turning over a leaf of my book, “I have been unable to complete, since, in order to interview the people who built your new wing, I should have to run up to London.”

“What the blazes have they to do with it?”

“Nothing at all, but I should have liked to learn their reasons for raising the wing three feet above the level of the hall-way.”

Between the heat and his growing excitement, Major Dale found himself at a temporary loss for words. Then:

“They told me,” he shouted at the top of his voice, “they told me at the time that it was[42] something about—that it was due to the plan—that it was——”

[42]

“I can imagine that they had some ready explanation,” I said, “but it may not have been the true one.”

“Then what the—what the—is the true one?”

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