CHAPTER VI.

GHOSTS.

"But stop," says the courteous and prudent reader, "are there any
such things as ghosts?"

"Any ghostesses!" cries Superstition, who settled long since in the
country, near a church yard on a "rising ground," "any ghostesses!
Ay, man, lots on 'em! Bushels on 'em! Sights on 'em! Why, there's
one as walks in our parish, reglar as the clock strikes twelve--and
always the same round, over church-stile, round the corner, through
the gap, into Shorts Spinney, and so along into our close, where he
takes a drink at the pump--for ye see he died in liquor, and then
arter he squenched hisself, wanishes into waper.

"Then there's the ghost of old Beales, as goes o' nights and sows
tares in his neighbor's wheat--I've often seed 'em in seed time.
They do say that Black Ben, the poacher, have riz, and what's more,
walked slap through all the squire's steel traps, without springing
on 'em. And then there's Bet Hawkey as murdered her own infant--only
the poor little babby hadn't learned to walk, and so can't appear
ag'in her."

THOMAS HOOD, <i>The Grimsby Ghost</i>.

That dark little room I described as so convenient during a terrific
thunderstorm or the prowling investigations of a burglar, began after a
while to get mysterious and uncanny, and I disliked, nay, dreaded to
enter it after dark. It was so still, so black, so empty, so chilly with
a sort of supernatural chill, so silent, that imagination conjured up
sounds such as I had never heard before. I had been told of an extremely
old woman, a great-great-grandmother, bed-ridden, peevish, and
weak-minded, who had occupied that room for nearly a score of years,
apparently forgotten by fate, and left to drag out a monotonous, weary
existence on not her "mattress grave" (like the poet Heine), but on an
immensely thick feather bed; only a care, a burden, to her relations.

As twilight came on, I always carefully closed that door and shut the
old lady in to sleep by herself. For it seemed that she was still there,
still propped up in an imaginary bed, mumbling incoherently of the
past, or moaning out some want, or calling for some one to bring a
light, as she used to.

Once in a while, they told me, she would regain her strength suddenly
and astonish the family by appearing at the door. When the
grand-daughter was enjoying a Sunday night call from her "intended" it
was rather embar