Horace N. Pym

"All round the house is the jet black night;

It stares through the window-pane;

It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,

And it moves with the moving flame.

Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum,

With the breath of the Bogie in my hair;

And all round the candle the crooked shadows come

And go marching along up the stair.

The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,

The shadow of the child that goes to bed—

All the wicked shadows coming, tramp, tramp, tramp,

With the black night overhead."

—R. L. Stevenson.

On the beautiful rocks of Red Head, near Arbroath, and surrounded by the glamour of Sir Walter Scott's "Antiquary," which was written in the alongside village of Auchmithie, and the plot and incidents of which are principally placed here, stands Ethie Castle, the Scotch home of the Earls of Northesk, and once one of the many residences of Cardinal Beaton, whose portrait by Titian hangs in the hall.

Many of the quaint old rooms have secret staircases at the bed-heads leading to rooms above or below, and forming convenient modes of escape if the occupants of the middle chambers were threatened with sudden attack. There are also some dungeon-like rooms below, with walls of vast thickness, and "squints" through which to fire arrows or musket-balls. The castle has been greatly improved and partly restored by its last owner, without removing or destroying any of its characteristic points.

Searching, when a guest there some years ago, amongst the literary and other curious remains, which add a great charm to this most interesting house, the writer was impressed with the following characteristic letter from Charles II. to the then Lord Northesk, which he was permitted to copy, and now to print. The letter is curious, as showing the evident belief that the King held in his Divine right to interfere with his subjects' affairs.

It is a holograph, beautifully written in a small clear hand—-not unlike that of W. M. Thackeray—-and has been fastened with a seal, still unbroken, no larger than a pea, but which nevertheless contains the crown and complete royal arms, and is a most beautiful specimen of seal-engraving. It would be interesting to know if this seal still exists amongst the curiosities at Windsor Castle:—-

Looking at the fine portrait of the recipient of this royal request, which hangs in the castle, and the stern, unrelenting expression of the otherwise handsome face, it is not difficult to presume that he somewhat resented this interference with his domestic plans. No copy of Lord Northesk's reply exists, but its contents may be guessed by the second letter from Whitehall, this time written by Lord Lauderdale:—

As, however, the marriage eventually did take place, let us hope that the young couple arranged it themselves, without any further expression of Royal wishes by the evidently well-meaning, if somewhat imperative, King.

Ethie has, of course, its family legends and ghosts—what old Scotch house is without them?—but the following, which I am most kindly permitted to repeat, is so curious in its modern confirmation, that it is well worth adding to the store of such weird narratives.

Many years ago, it is said that a lady in the castle destroyed her young child in one of the rooms, which afterwards bore the stigma of the association. Eventually the room was closed, the door screwed up, and heavy wooden shutters were fastened outside the windows. But those who occupied the rooms above and below this gruesome chamber would often hear, in the watches of the night, the pattering of little feet over the floor, and the sound of the little wheels of a child's cart being dragged to and fro; a peculiarity connected with this sound being, that one wheel creaked and chirruped as it moved. Years rolled by, and the room continued to bear its sinister character until the late Lord Northesk succeeded to the property, when he very wisely determined to bring, if possible, the legend to an end, and probe the ghostly story to its truthful or fictitious base.

Consequently he had the outside window shutters removed, and the heavy wall-door unscrewed, and then, with some members of his family present, ordered the door to be forced back. When the room was open and birds began to sing, it proved to be quite destitute of furniture or ornament. It had a bare hearth-stone, on which some grey ashes still rested, and by the side of the hearth was a child's little wooden go-cart on four solid wooden wheels!

Turning to his daughter, my lord asked her to wheel the little carriage across the floor of the room. When she did so, it was with a strange sense of something uncanny that the listeners heard one wheel creak and chirrup as it ran!

Since then the baby footsteps have ceased, and the room is once more devoted to ordinary uses, but the ghostly little go-cart still rests at Ethie for the curious to see and to handle. Many friends and neighbours yet live who testify to having heard the patter of the feet and the creak of the little wheel in former days, when the room was a haunted reality, but now the