too were sceptical, but even so, we thought the landlord's explanation of the nightly noises rather weak, notwithstanding his further remark that he thought the woman was very nervous, and the house being in a lonely situation made her the more so when she was left in it by herself at times, as she frequently was on their first coming there. "But that hardly accounts for her seeing the ghost," we exclaimed. "Oh! well, I just put that down to nerves; I expect she got frightened when she went there at first, and, as I've said, imagined the rest. I don't believe in ghosts seen by other people." "And what about the human bones?" we queried. "Well, as to the bones, they say as how when the house was built some soil was taken from the churchyard to fill up the foundations, and that fact would account for the finding of them."
INQUIRIES It certainly seemed to us that the landlord's theory and explanations rather added to the mystery than helped to clear it up in any way; his reasonings were hardly convincing. We noted one thing in the landlord's arguments that appeared to us almost as improbable as the ghost story, namely, the way he so readily accounted for the existence of human bones under the floor by the removal of soil from the churchyard, the latter we afterwards discovered being about a mile away from the place; and even allowing such a thing to be permitted at the time of the building of the house—perhaps, by rough guess, some fifty years ago—such a proceeding was most unlikely, as soil could be had close at hand for the digging.
