or details the minute incidents
which serve to give it authenticity, and lowers his voice with an
affectation of mystery while he approaches the fearful and wonderful part.

It was with such advantages that the present writer heard the following
events related, more than twenty years since, by the celebrated Miss
Seward, of Litchfield, who, to her numerous accomplishments, added, in a
remarkable degree, the power of narrative in private conversation.

In its present form the tale must necessarily lose all the interest which
was attached to it by the flexible voice and intelligent features of the
gifted narrator. Yet still, read aloud, to an undoubting audience by the
doubtful light of the closing evening, or, in silence, by a decaying
taper, and amidst the solitude of a half-lighted apartment, it may redeem
its character as a good ghost-story.

Miss Seward always affirmed that she had derived her information from an
authentic source, although she suppressed the names of the two persons
chiefly concerned. I will not avail myself of any particulars I may have
since received concerning the localities of the detail, but suffer them to
rest under the same general description in which they were first related
to me; and, for the same reason, I will not add to or diminish the
narrative by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but simply
rehearse, as I heard it, a story of supernatural terror.

About the end of the American War, when the officers of Lord Cromwell's
army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others who had been made
prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy, were returning
to their own country, to relate their adventures, and repose themselves
after their fatigues, there was among them a general officer, to whom Miss
S. gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the
inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative. He was an
officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family
and attainments.

Some business had carried General Browne upon a tour through the western
counties, when, in the conclusion of a morning stage, he found himself in
the vicinity of a small country town, which presented a scene of uncommon
beauty, and of a character peculiarly English.

The little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore testimony
to the devotion of ages long past, lay amid pastures and corn-fields of
small extent, but bounded and d