On the Sunday morning, when I descended to the breakfast-room, I asked the eldest of the two servants what had occasioned so much going up and down stairs in the night. She declared that no one had left their bedrooms after they had retired to them. I then inquired of the younger girl, and of each of my daughters as they made their appearance. No one had left their rooms—they had not heard any noises. My youngest daughter, who had been, after this inquiry of mine, for some minutes alone with the youngest servant, came laughing to me,—
“Papa, Nanny says the house is haunted, and that they have often heard strange noises in it.”
So I called Nancy; but all I could learn from her was that noises, like that of men going up and down stairs,—of threshing corn, and of “beating the borer,” (a mining operation,) were not uncommon.
We all laughed over papa’s ghost during the breakfast, and by and by old Mary made her appearance.
“Yes,” she said, “it is quite true, as Nanny as a told you. I have often heard all sorts of strange noises; but I b’lieve they all come from the lode of tin which runs under the house. _Wherever there is a lode of tin, you are sure to hear strange noises._”
“What, Mary! was it the knockers I heard last night?”
“Yes; ’twas the knackers, down working upon the tin—no doubt of it.”
This was followed by a long explanation, and numerous stories of mines in the Lelant and St Ives district, in which the knockers had been often heard.
After a little time, Mary, imagining, I suppose, that the young ladies might not like to sleep in a house beneath which the knockers were at work; again came with her usual low courtesy into the parlour.
“Beg pardon, sir,” says she; “but none of the young ladies need be afraid. There are no spirits in the house; it is very nearly a new one, and no one has ever died in the house.”
This makes a distinct difference between the ghost of the departed and those gnomes who are doomed to toil in the earth’s dark recesses.[47] The Cornish knocker does not appear to be the “_cobal_” of German miners. The former are generally kindly, and often serve the industrious miner; the latter class are always malicious, and, I believe, are never heard but when mischief is near.