wice-Told Tales_, including
"Edward Randolph's Portrait." On the French side we might note too that
terrible graveyard tale of Guy de Maupassant, _La Morte_, in which the
lover who has lost his beloved keeps vigil at her grave by night in his
despair, and sees--dreadful resurrection--"que toutes les tombes etaient
ouvertes, et tous les cadavres en etaient sortis." And why? That they
might efface the lying legends inscribed on their tombs, and replace
them with the actual truth. Villiers de l'Isle Adam has in his _Contes
Cruels_ given us the strange story of Vera, which may be read as a
companion study to _La Morte_, with another recall from the dead to end
a lover's obsession. Nature and supernature cross in de l'Isle Adam's
mystical drama _Axel_ a play which will never hold the stage, masterly
attempt as it is to dramatise the inexplainable mystery.

Among later tales ought to be reckoned Edith Wharton's _Tales of Men and
Ghosts_, and Henry James's _The Two Magics_, whose "Turn of the Screw"
gives us new instances of the evil genii that haunt mortals, in this
case two innocent children. One remembers sundry folk-tales with the
same motive--of children bewitched or forespoken--inspiring them. And an
old charm in Orkney which used to run:

"Father, Son, Holy Ghost!
Bitten sall they be,
Bairn, wha have bitten thee!
Care to their black vein,
Till thou hast thy health again!
Mend thou in God's name!"

John Aubrey in his _Miscellanies_ has many naive evidences of the
twilight region of consciousness, like that between wake and sleep,
which tends to fade when we are wideawake; so much so, that we call it
visionary. Yet it is very real to the haunted folk, to Aubrey's
correspondent, the Rector of Chedzoy, or to the false love of the Demon
Lover, or that Mr Bourne of whom Glanvil tells in _The Iron Chest of
Durley_, or the Bishop Evodius who was St Augustine's friend, or for
that matter the son of Monica himself. The reality of these visitations
may seem dim, but the most sceptical of us cannot doubt that, whether
from some quickened fear of death or impending disaster, from evil
conscience or swift intensification of vision; whether in the forms of
beloved sons lost at sea or of other revenants who were held
indispensably dear in life, the haunters have appeared, to the absolute
belief of those who saw them or their simulacra.

"It poseth me," said Richard Baxter, "to think of what kind these
vis