IN the wartime I spent a holiday in a Dorset village, and the first
night, whilst sleeping in a bedroom in a lonely cottage, I was
awakened by the door noiselessly opening, and the figure of a man
dressed in white garments passing through the room and talking softly
to himself. There was only a woman in the cottage and she was fast
asleep.
A year after, I read in some old memoirs of two of Nelson's
lieutenants who, whilst ashore at Weymouth, met two women and
accompanied them home. During supper they quarrelled, and one woman
threw a flat-iron at Lieutenant ——— and killed him. His companion was
horrified and, urging the women to be silent, he took the body on his
horse to a lonely spot in Dorset, and buried it and rejoined his ship.
The spot where the lieutenant was buried was the spot on which stands
the cottage in which I had this strange experience.