in the Shchapoff case, at Rerrick, and in other haunted
houses. Here are some tales of Hands, old or new.

THE COLD HAND

[Jerome Cardan, the famous physician, tells the following anecdote in
his De Rerum Varietate, lib. x., 93. Jerome only once heard a rapping
himself, at the time of the death of a friend at a distance. He was
in a terrible fright, and dared not leave his room all day.]

A story which my father used often to tell: "I was brought up," he
said, "in the house of Joannes Resta, and therein taught Latin to his
three sons; when I left them I supported myself on my own means. It
chanced that one of these lads, while I was studying medicine, fell
deadly sick, he being now a young man grown, and I was called in to be
with the youth, partly for my knowledge of medicine, partly for old
friendship's sake. The master of the house happened to be absent; the
patient slept in an upper chamber, one of his brothers and I in a
lower room, the third brother, Isidore, was not at home. Each of the
rooms was next to a turret; turrets being common in that city. When
we went to bed on the first night of my visit, I heard a constant
knocking on the wall of the room.

"'What is that?' I said.

"'Don't be afraid, it is only a familiar spirit,' said my companion.
'They call them follets; it is harmless enough, and seldom so
troublesome as it is now: I don't know what can be the matter with
it.'

"The young fellow went to sleep, but I was kept awake for a while,
wondering and observing. After half an hour of stillness I felt a
thumb press on my head, and a sense of cold. I kept watching; the
forefinger, the middle finger, and the rest of the hand were next laid
on, the little finger nearly reaching my forehead. The hand was like
that of a boy of ten, to guess by the size, and so cold that it was
extremely unpleasant. Meantime I was chuckling over my luck in such
an opportunity of witnessing a wonder, and I listened eagerly.

"The hand stole with the ring finger foremost over my face and down my
nose, it was slipping into my mouth, and two finger-tips had entered,
when I threw it off with my right hand, thinking it was uncanny, and
not relishing it inside my body. Silence followed and I lay awake,
distrusting the spectre more or less. In about half an hour it
returned and repeated its former conduct, touching me very lightly,
yet very chilly. When it reached my mouth I again drove it away.
Though my lips wer