he battles fought about its
walls, and firmly believed that every bone we found in the ruins
belonged to an ancient warrior. We tried to see who could climb
highest on the crumbling peaks and crags, and took chances that no
cautious mountaineer would try. That I did not fall and finish my
rock-scrambling in those adventurous boyhood days seems now a
reasonable wonder.

Among our best games were running, jumping, wrestling, and scrambling.
I was so proud of my skill as a climber that when I first heard of
hell from a servant girl who loved to tell its horrors and warn us
that if we did anything wrong we would be cast into it, I always
insisted that I could climb out of it. I imagined it was only a sooty
pit with stone walls like those of the castle, and I felt sure there
must be chinks and cracks in the masonry for fingers and toes. Anyhow
the terrors of the horrible place seldom lasted long beyond the
telling; for natural faith casts out fear.

Most of the Scotch children believe in ghosts, and some under peculiar
conditions continue to believe in them all through life. Grave ghosts
are deemed particularly dangerous, and many of the most credulous will
go far out of their way to avoid passing through or near a graveyard
in the dark. After being instructed by the servants in the nature,
looks, and habits of the various black and white ghosts, boowuzzies,
and witches we often speculated as to whether they could run fast, and
tried to believe that we had a good chance to get away from most of
them. To improve our speed and wind, we often took long runs into the
country. Tam o' Shanter's mare outran a lot of witches,--at least
until she reached a place of safety beyond the keystone of the
bridge,--and we thought perhaps we also might be able to outrun them.

Our house formerly belonged to a physician, and a servant girl told us
that the ghost of the dead doctor haunted one of the unoccupied rooms
in the second story that was kept dark on account of a heavy
window-tax. Our bedroom was adjacent to the ghost room, which had in
it a lot of chemical apparatus,--glass tubing, glass and brass
retorts, test-tubes, flasks, etc.,--and we thought that those strange
articles were still used by the old dead doctor in compounding physic.
In the long summer days David and I were put to bed several hours
before sunset. Mother tucked us in carefully, drew the curtains of the
big old-fashioned bed, and told us to lie still and sleep like