e other end of the
street. From that day Mr. Mackay always heard the grocer's knock "a
little previous," accompanied by the grocer's cough, which was
peculiar. Then all the family heard it, including the son who later
became learned. He, when he had left his village for Glasgow,
reasoned himself out of the opinion that the grocer's knock did herald
and precede the grocer. But when he went home for a visit he found
that he heard it just as of old. Possibly some local Sentimental
Tommy watched for the grocer, played the trick and ran away. This
explanation presents no difficulty, but the boy was never detected.
{191}

Such anecdotes somehow do not commend themselves to the belief even of
people who can believe a good deal.

But "the spirits of the living," as the Highlanders say, have surely
as good a chance to knock, or appear at a distance, as the spirits of
the dead. To be sure, the living do not know (unless they are making
a scientific experiment) what trouble they are giving on these
occasions, but one can only infer, like St. Augustine, that probably
the dead don't know it either.

Thus,

MY GILLIE'S FATHER'S STORY

Fishing in Sutherland, I had a charming companion in the gillie. He
was well educated, a great reader, the best of salmon fishers, and I
never heard a man curse William, Duke of Cumberland, with more
enthusiasm. His father, still alive, was second-sighted, and so, to a
moderate extent and without theory, was my friend. Among other
anecdotes (confirmed in writing by the old gentleman) was this:--

The father had a friend who died in the house which they both
occupied. The clothes of the deceased hung on pegs in the bedroom.
One night the father awoke, and saw a stranger examining and handling
the clothes of the defunct. Then came a letter from the dead man's
brother, inquiring about the effects. He followed later, and was the
stranger seen by my gillie's father.

Thus the living but absent may haunt a house both noisily and by
actual appearance. The learned even think, for very exquisite
reasons, that "Silverton Abbey" {192} is haunted noisily by a "spirit
of the living". Here is a case:--

THE DREAM THAT KNOCKED AT THE DOOR

The following is an old but good story. The Rev. Joseph Wilkins died,
an aged man, in 1800. He left this narrative, often printed; the date
of the adventure is 1754, when Mr. Wilkins, aged twenty-three, was a
schoolmaster in Devonshire. The dream was a