to explain that the two ideas were not parallel by any means.
At this juncture, Phil Briant came to the rescue.

"Ah now, git out," said he. "I agree with Jim intirely; an' Tim Rokens
isn't quite so cliver as he thinks. Now look here, lads, here's how it
stands, 'xactly. Jim says he never seed his own mind--very good; and he
says as how nobody else niver seed it nother; well, and wot then? Don't
you observe it's 'cause he han't got none at all to see? He han't got
even the ghost of one, so how could ye expect anybody to see it?"

"Oh, hold yer noise, Paddy," exclaimed Dick Barnes, "an' let's have a
ghost story from Tim Rokens. He b'lieves in ghosts, anyhow, an' could
give us a yarn about 'em, I knows, if he likes. Come along now, Tim,
like a good fellow."

"Ay, that's it," cried Briant; "give us a stiff 'un now. Don't be
afeard to skear us, old boy."

"Oh, I can give ye a yarn about ghosts, cer'nly," said Tim Rokens,
looking into the bowl of his pipe in order to make sure that it was
sufficiently charged to last out the story. "I'll tell ye of a ghost I
once seed and knocked down."

"Knocked down!" cried Nikel Sling in surprise; "why, I allers thought as
how ghosts was spirits, an' couldn't be knocked down or cotched
neither."

"Not at all," replied Rokens; "ghosts is made of all sorts o' things--
brass, and iron, and linen, and buntin', and timber; it wos a brass
ghost the feller that I'm goin' to tell ye about--"

"I say, Sling," interrupted Briant, "av ghosts wos spirits, as you
thought they wos, would they be allowed into the State of Maine?"

"Oh, Phil, shut up, do! Now then, Tim, fire away."

"Well, then," began Rokens, with great deliberation, "it was on a
Vednesday night as it happened. I had bin out at supper with a friend
that night, and we'd had a glass or two o' grog; for ye see, lads, it
was some years ago, afore I tuk to temp'rance. I had a long way to go
over a great dark moor afore I could git to the place where I lodged, so
I clapped on all sail to git over the moor, seein' the moon would go
down soon; but it wouldn't do: the moon set when I wos in the very
middle of the moor, and as the road wasn't over good, I wos in a state
o' confumble lest I should lose it altogether. I looks round in all
directions, but I couldn't see nothin'--cause why? there wasn't nothin'
to be seen. It was 'orrid dark, I can tell ye. Jist one or two stars
a-shinin', like half-a-dozen farden dips in a g