82 Legends of Parishes, etc. some stables in Chapel street, and the play was stopped for a few moments whilst one of the actors told the audience. Another haunted house, at the opposite side of Penzance, is cele- brated in a poem called " The Petition of an Old Uninhabited House," written and published in 1811, by the Rev. C. V. Le Grice, who was then Vicar of Madron. He was a friend of Charles Lamb, who mentions him in his " Essay on Christ's Hospital." About this house a lady once told me a strange story, that I will relate. Forty years ago, she, a perfect stranger to the place, never having been in Penzance before, came to it with her husband and her first child, for she was then a young wife. As they meant to settle in the town, they went to this hotel, where they intended staying until they could get a suitable house. On the evening of their arrival, her husband having gone out, she sat alone before the fire nursing her child, when she suddenly saw a little old man, in a very old-fashioned dress, come into the room. He sat down in a chair near her, looked steadfastly into the fire, and, after some time, without saying a word, he rose and left. On her husband's return, she told him of her queer visitor. The next morning they made enquiries about him, and found that the hotel had been built on the site of the old uninhabited house ; that nearly the whole of it had been destroyed, but a few of the best rooms remained ; and that they were in a haunted chamber. She declared that she could never sleep there another night, and, temporarily, they engaged some furnished lodgings. These old rooms are now pulled down and billiard and other rooms cover the place where they stood. Outside the boundary-stone, west of Penzance, stands, in its own grounds, a house to which additions have been made by many succeeding generations. Tradition, of course, gave it a ghost. With the other members of my family I lived there for several years, but none of us ever saw it. I am bound, however, to state that we never slept in the haunted chamber. For a short period it was occupied by a groom, who one morning came to me with a very long face, and said he dared not sleep there any more, for some mysterious being came night after night, and pulled all the bed-clothes ofi^ him ; rather than do so, he would sleep in the harness-room.
