y old
man some years ago, was present at the getting of the bones. Mr.
Small, Finzyhan, when bringing his daughter home from school in
Edinburgh, saw a coffin at the door of a public house near Rychalzie
where he generally stopped, but he did not go in as usual, thinking
that there was a death in the family. The innkeeper came out and
asked him why he was passing the door, and told him the coffin
contained the bones of the murdered man which had been collected, upon
which he went into the house.

"The Soutars disliked much to be questioned on the subject of the Dog
of Mause. Thomas Soutar, who was tenant in Easter Mause, formerly
named Knowhead of Mause, and died last year upwards of eighty years of
age, said that the Soutars came originally from Annandale, and that
their name was Johnston; that there were three brothers who fled from
that part of the country on account of their having killed a man; that
they came by Soutar's Hill, and having asked the name of the hill,
were told 'Soutar,' upon which they said, 'Soutar be it then,' and
took that name. One of the brothers went south and the others came
north." {155a}

The appearance of human ghosts in the form of beasts is common enough;
in Shropshire they usually "come" as bulls. (See Miss Burne's
Shropshire Folklore.) They do not usually speak, like the Dog o'
Mause. M. d'Assier, a French Darwinian, explains that ghosts revert
"atavistically" to lower forms of animal life! {155b}

We now, in accordance with a promise already made, give an example of
the ghosts of beasts! Here an explanation by the theory that the
consciousness of the beast survives death and affects with a
hallucination the minds of living men and animals, will hardly pass
current. But if such cases were as common and told on evidence as
respectable as that which vouches for appearances of the dead,
believers in these would either have to shift their ground, or to
grant that

Admitted to that equal sky,
Our faithful dog may bear us company.

We omit such things as the dripping death wraith of a drowned cat who
appeared to a lady, or the illused monkey who died in a Chinese house,
after which he haunted it by rapping, secreting objects, and, in
short, in the usual way. {155c} We adduce

PETER'S GHOST

A naval officer visited a friend in the country. Several men were
sitting round the smoking-room fire when he arrived, and a fox-terrier
was with them. Presently the heavy, shambling