and bid the servants who came to
attend him, "Tak aff the ghaist!" They took off accordingly a female in
white, and the poor farmer himself was conveyed to bed, where he lay
struggling for weeks with a strong nervous fever. The female was found
to be a maniac, who had been left a widow very suddenly by an
affectionate husband, and the nature and cause of her malady induced
her, when she could make her escape, to wander to the churchyard, where
she sometimes wildly wept over his grave, and sometimes, standing on the
corner of the churchyard wall, looked out, and mistook every stranger on
horseback for the husband she had lost. If this woman, which was very
possible, had dropt from the horse unobserved by him whom she had made
her involuntary companion, it would have been very hard to have
convinced the honest farmer that he had not actually performed part of
his journey with a ghost behind him.

There is also a large class of stories of this sort, where various
secrets of chemistry, of acoustics, ventriloquism, or other arts, have
been either employed to dupe the spectators, or have tended to do so
through mere accident and coincidence. Of these it is scarce necessary
to quote instances; but the following may be told as a tale recounted by
a foreign nobleman known to me nearly thirty years ago, whose life, lost
in the service of his sovereign, proved too short for his friends and
his native land.

At a certain old castle on the confines of Hungary, the lord to whom it
belonged had determined upon giving an entertainment worthy of his own
rank and of the magnificence of the antique mansion which he inhabited.
The guests of course were numerous, and among them was a veteran officer
of hussars, remarkable for his bravery. When the arrangements for the
night were made this officer was informed that there would be difficulty
in accommodating the company in the castle, large as was, unless some
one would take the risk of sleeping in a room supposed to be haunted,
and that, as he was known to be above such prejudices, the apartment was
in the first place proposed for his occupation, as the person least
likely to suffer a bad night's rest from such a cause. The major
thankfully accepted the preference, and having shared the festivity of
the evening, retired after midnight, having denounced vengeance against
any one who should presume by any trick to disturb his repose; a threat
which his habits would, it was supposed, render h