onceived that they saw, apparitions which were
invisible to others, contributes to the increase of such stories--which
do accordingly sometimes meet us in a shape of veracity difficult to
question.

The following story was narrated to me by my friend, Mr. William Clerk,
chief clerk to the Jury Court, Edinburgh, when he first learned it, now
nearly thirty years ago, from a passenger in the mail-coach. With Mr.
Clerk's consent, I gave the story at that time to poor Mat Lewis, who
published it with a ghost-ballad which he adjusted on the same theme.
From the minuteness of the original detail, however, the narrative is
better calculated for prose than verse; and more especially as the
friend to whom it was originally communicated is one of the most
accurate, intelligent, and acute persons whom I have known in the course
of my life, I am willing to preserve the precise story in this place.

It was about the eventful year 1800, when the Emperor Paul laid his
ill-judged embargo on British trade, that my friend Mr. William Clerk,
on a journey to London, found himself in company, in the mail-coach,
with a seafaring man of middle age and respectable appearance, who
announced himself as master of a vessel in the Baltic trade, and a
sufferer by the embargo. In the course of the desultory conversation
which takes place on such occasions the seaman observed, in compliance
with a common superstition, "I wish we may have good luck on our
journey--there is a magpie." "And why should that be unlucky?" said my
friend. "I cannot tell you that," replied the sailor; "but all the world
agrees that one magpie bodes bad luck--two are not so bad, but three are
the devil. I never saw three magpies but twice, and once I had near lost
my vessel, and the second I fell from a horse, and was hurt." This
conversation led Mr. Clerk to observe that he supposed he believed also
in ghosts, since he credited such auguries. "And if I do," said the
sailor, "I may have my own reasons for doing so;" and he spoke this in a
deep and serious manner, implying that he felt deeply what he was
saying. On being further urged, he confessed that, if he could believe
his own eyes, there was one ghost at least which he had seen repeatedly.
He then told his story as I now relate it.

Our mariner had in his youth gone mate of a slave vessel from Liverpool,
of which town he seemed to be a native. The captain of the vessel was a
man of a variable temper, sometimes kind and c