The Turn Of The Screw

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it
was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I
remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met
in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition
in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasionan appearance, of a dreadful kind, to
a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her
not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she
had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation that drew
from Douglasnot immediately, but later in the eveninga reply that had the interesting
consequence to which I call attention.