Preface: These stories have been written in the hopes of giving some pleasant qualms to their reader, so that, if by chance, anyone may be occupying in their perusal a leisure half-hour before he goes to bed when the night and the house are still, he may perhaps cast an occasional glance into the corners and dark places of the room where he sits, to make sure that nothing unusual lurks in the shadow. For this is the avowed object of ghost-stories and such tales as deal with the dim unseen forces which occasionally and perturbingly make themselves manifest. The author therefore fervently wishes his readers a few uncomfortable moments. Some of those tales have appeared before in various magazines; the remainder are new. One, the story of "The Man who went too Far," is the germ of what subsequently developed into a book called "The Angel of Pain." E.F. Benson Contents The Room in the Tower The Dust-Cloud Gavon's Eve The Confession of Charles Linkworth At Abdul Ali's Gate The Shootings of Achnaleish How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery Caterpillars The Cat The Bus-Conductor The Man who went too Far Between the Lights Outside the Door The Terror by Night The Other Bed The Thing in the Hall The House with the Brick-Kiln