lands of the South.

The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds of years rolled to and fro
the tide of martial life between London and the great Sea Gate of the
Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused. Mr. Balfour's land, on
the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a
whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the
heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne--White's Selborne--that
can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories
there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the
not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There
used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a
comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear
nothing about them now." "Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's
Punch Bowl?" "Not even at the Murder Stone. I have driven past it at all
hours, and never saw anything--but the stone, of course."

Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the
rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where
afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when
the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and
looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid
place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught
among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air.
It is the way with ghosts--they seldom appear where they might be looked
for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday
world, which always happens.

Of this I had soon a very curious illustration. For, although there were
no ghosts in the Devil's Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that
there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa in which I was
quartered! It didn't appear to me--at least, it has not done so as yet.
But it appeared to some friends of mine whose statement is explicit
enough. Here was a find indeed. I spent most of my boyhood within a mile
of the famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but I had never slept
before in a place which ghosts used as a trysting place. I asked my
hostess about it. She replied, "Yes, it is quite true; but, although you
may not believe it, I am the ghost." "You? How?" "Yes," she replied,
quite seriously; "it is quite true what your friends have told you. They
did see what you would c