an cry and moan, and then again laugh as though she would die
laughing, I have heard sounds so like them that--I am a fool to confess
it--I have covered my head with the bedclothes; for I have had a fancy
in my dreams, that I could hardly shake off when I woke up, about that
so-called witch that was his great-grandmother, or whatever it was,--a
sort of fancy that she visited the little gentleman,--a young woman
in old-fashioned dress, with a red ring round her white neck,--not a
necklace, but a dull stain.

Of course you don't suppose that I have any foolish superstitions about
the matter,--I, the Professor, who have seen enough to take all that
nonsense out of any man's head! It is not our beliefs that frighten us
half so much as our fancies. A man not only believes, but knows he runs
a risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it doesn't worry him
much.

On the other hand, carry that man across a pasture a little way from
some dreary country-village, and show him an old house where there were
strange deaths a good many years ago, and rumors of ugly spots on the
walls,--the old man hung himself in the garret, that is certain, and
ever since the country-people have called it "the haunted house,"--the
owners haven't been able to let it since the last tenants left on
account of the noises,--so it has fallen into sad decay, and the moss
grows on the rotten shingles of the roof, and the clapboards have turned
black, and the windows rattle like teeth that chatter with fear, and the
walls of the house begin to lean as if its knees were shaking,--take the
man who didn't mind the real risk of the cars to that old house, on some
dreary November evening, and ask him to sleep there alone,--how do you
think he will like it? He doesn't believe one word of ghosts,--but then
he knows, that, whether waking or sleeping, his imagination will people
the haunted chambers with ghastly images. It is not what we _believe_,
as I said before, that frightens us commonly, but what we _conceive_. A
principle that reaches a good way, if I am not mistaken. I say, then,
that, if these odd sounds coming from the little gentleman's chamber
sometimes make me nervous, so that I cannot get to sleep, it is not
because I suppose he is engaged in any unlawful or mysterious way. The
only wicked suggestion that ever came into my head was one that was
founded on the landlady's story of his having a pile of gold; it was a
ridiculous fancy; besides, I sus