He took off the chains of the door, unbolted it, and pulled it open.

What he saw no human being knows; but it must have been something awful, for, without a cry, the old steward fell dead in the hall.

Perhaps the strangest part of the story is this: that the shadow of a burly man, holding a pistol in his hand, entered by the open door, stepped over the steward's body, and, gliding up the stairs, disappeared, no one could say where.

Such is the legend.

I shall not tell the many ingenious explanations of it that have been offered.
Every Christmas eve, however, the silent scene is said to be gone through again; and tradition declares that no person lives for twelve months at whom the ghostly intruder points his pistol.
On Christmas Day the gentleman who tells the tale in a scientific journal created some sensation at the breakfast-table by solemnly asserting that he had seen the ghost.