Part 5

And after that a heavy silence fell over the mysterious murders of the Joyce children. The officers of justice, to whom I spoke during that time, looked wise and watchful, and held to the belief that the malefactor would yet be found.

I come now to a portion of my story that I assure my reader is, in every respect, true. I know that only one-eighth, or even a lesser moiety of the world, will give me credence; not that they will directly question my plighted word, but they will question the philosophy of which my experience is a phase; but who knows but that it may be an actual substantiation? So assured was I that no deception was practised upon me, that it was only the other day that I made a statement of it to Mr. Kurtz, the chief of police, to whom I had occasion to speak of my design to write a narrative of my knowledge and experience in relation to the unhappy incidents of the murder, putting it to his discretion whether I should go on and give my writing to the public. I had some misgiving as to the propriety of saying anything of such importance while it remained in its present apparent quiescence; and though it is not essential to my purpose to repeat our conversation, I feel at liberty to say that he favored my design most cordially. But with regard to my revelation to him of what I shall soon put my reader in possession of, he did not evince that unpleasant scepticism which so often borders upon the insolent, and listened to my narration with the evidences of a respect that at least bore the semblance of belief. I must confess, however, that he somewhat startled me when, at the conclusion of my recital, he put to me this practical question: “Do you think you could recognize the man?” That question, the reader will perceive anon, was somewhat of a staggerer; but I rallied under the belief that the head dealer in the positive had not quite grasped the peculiar significance of my revelation, and since then I have seen something—a something which he has in his desk, and which may appear hereafter—that would, if I deem it necessary to test my idea, perhaps enable me to say to him, “I can.”

It was quite three weeks after the blood of the unhappy Joyce children had been mixed with the leaves and oozings of that mysterious wood,—when everything was falling back, in our country side, to the old order of simple occurrences,—that, upon a still and clear night, I went out of the cottage where I still lived, and, taking the two dogs with me, strolled down through the stable-yard, and past the garden, until I came to the brow of the hill that formed the apex of my friend’s grass-lands. The brow of the hill was flat all about me, commencing its declension some hundred and fifty feet eastwardly from where I stopped, and at the base running off into a meadow, the opposite side of which was overlooked by the Bussey wood; and, from where I stood, several pines rose out of the even surface of the forest, marking, as with an uplifted hand spread out, the place where the murder of the girl had been done. I have to be particular in my description seemingly to tediousness, but the singularity of what transpired leaves me no choice; for better, on such a matter, not to speak at all than not to speak explicitly. I resume. The grass was short on the brow of the hill, not over a few inches in length, improving in quality as the descent reached the valley. There was a tree near me; but that I left behind, putting it in my rear some ten paces, when I stopped. On my left was Motley’s wood,—so often mentioned,—drawing up with its intense shadows, close to the dividing wall. From the wall to where I stood all was clear and distinct, save where the shadows, or, more properly speaking, the shade fell over the ground, though in that shade there was a secondary light which artists and all thorough students of nature will recognize. The wall and the wood on my left ran down to that corner at the creek, which was only a short distance, about fifty feet, from the spot where the boy had fallen. Some two hundred and fifty yards away, and close to the corner just mentioned, was a clump of trees, and then straight before me, without an intervening object, the dark wood and the hand-like pines, that gloomed, in deeper gloom than night itself imparts, with all her shadows, over the gory rock of the girl’s death-bed. My purpose was simply to take the cooler air from the winnowing trees; for the room where I had been sitting with the family was oppressive with lamp-light and the encased atmosphere. I had become so accustomed to the dread localities, that habit had destroyed, with the first surprise and horror, all the keen sensations of a mysterious and indescribable neighborhoodism to the scene. Indeed, I had begun to look upon the whole affair as a story that had been told to me by some such person as the “Ancient Mariner.” Had it been otherwise, I never could have been induced to stay another moment in that house. I beg to assure everybody that when, at that hour of half-past eight o’clock, I left the parlor to stroll to the brow of the meadow hill, I did not have one thought in my head that connected itself with the murders. Other affairs had turned up, in which I was personally interested, and my mind, though not dwelling upon them at the moment, felt, if it felt anything at all, the reverberations of mental discussions upon the topics I have just spoken of as of personal interest. I think now, remembering everything, that if I had any peculiar sensation, it was not superior to that of the two dogs who kept close to my heels,—for I was there to enjoy the sensuous and physical boon of air; they, indeed, governed by a higher motive, the society of man. I was, consequently, if I may say so with perfect self-respect, in a complete condition of animal existence, and not prepared for or expecting anything beyond the ordinary condition of animal and vegetable life. I was, in fine, nearly upon a level with the inanimate existences around and about me. I am unwillingly compelled to remind the reader that it was the habit of my host, who did business in the city, of leaving the train at Laurel Hill Station, at nine o’clock, as a general thing, and keeping the main road until he got to the bottom of the hill near to where the brook, so often mentioned, crosses the road, entered the lowlands at the outskirts of Bussey’s wood, and thence following the path which led by the boy’s murder-place, and up the hill-side covered by the Motley wood, keeping close to the wall until he reached that point of the wall near which I was standing, passed over it, and was home. It must also be borne in mind that the two dogs loved their master with a steadfast affection; in the case of the serene Jack it was a very jump-about, capering, stump-tail, demonstrative love. Whenever they saw him in the distance nearing home, or knew by instinct that he was approaching, though for the moment hidden by the intervening trees or rocks, they would break away from my minor and only temporary bonds, and rush to meet him exultingly, and then ensued a scene of wild confusion and barbaric dog-taming. These two facts remembered, I will advance with my narrative.

1. Steam-Car Line. G. Horse-Car Line. 2. Motley-House. 3. Gate leading into Pasture and Bussey Wood. 4, 4, 4, 4. Returning route of my host. 5. Bridge over public road. 6. Spot where the Boy’s body was found. 7. Arch Bridge. 8. Flat Bridge. 9. Where I stood. 10. Where the Apparition stood. 11. Where the Girl’s body was discovered. 12. The Gate on Dedham Wood. 13, 13. Public road to Dedham. 14, 14, 14, 14, 14. Bussey’s Wood. 15. Motley’s Wood. 16. The Wall. 17. Fence between Bussey’s Wood and the Howard property. Arrow. The Creek. - - - - - - My route at night to the Murder-Rock.]

Knowing that my host was irregular as to his hours of return home at night,—sometimes arriving by another than the nine-o’clock train,—I was not surprised when I saw a figure lean over the wall for an instant within about twenty feet of me, pause a moment, and then cross over to the side on which I was. Seeing that he stopped, I spoke aloud these words, and none other, thinking of none other: “Hallo, Dan, is that you?”—for, though I could discover the figure and recognize its movements, there was too great a shade thrown over the wall to enable me to distinguish even the lineaments of a face so familiar to me as were those of my friend. To my appeal there was no reply, and then in an instant the impression came upon me that if it really was my friend, he was making an essay upon my nerves. So up to this moment I never had a thought apart from him. I did not notice the conduct of the dogs, or even think of them, for if I had done so, I never would have inquired if it was “Dan;” for they would have been away from me at the first footfall after he had passed the vicinity of the low bridge down in the hollow of the hill; or, having not done that, they would have been at the wall the moment his face looked over it. Nor did I observe that they kept unusually close to me. I did not even think that, if it was not him, it was extraordinary that the dogs did not, without more ado, make their assault; for as a vigilance committee they were extremely zealous in the discharge of their duty, and woe betide the trespasser upon those limits after dark if they once got scent of him! That sedate and usually almost apathetic Jack was equal to a cherubim with a flaming sword; and as to Jack the fighter, his mind was strictly judicial with regard to trespass. It was not till afterward, when the climax of this abrupt and singular apparition was reached, that my attention was directed to the behavior of my two companions. While I stood perfectly motionless, waiting for some recognition of my appeal, the figure advanced slowly in a direct line from the wall, leaving the shadow, and stopped before me, and not twenty feet away from me. I saw at once that it was somebody I had never seen before. When in the light, without even a weed to obstruct my vision, as soon as he stopped, I called again: “Speak, or I will fire!” I am not naturally of a blood-letting disposition, but somehow or other that threat came from me without any power or will of my mind to arrest it. It was an unmeaning and perhaps a cowardly speech, for he was alone, while I was armed with two powerful dogs, either one of whom would have vanquished him, had I but said the word. Nor had I a pistol to carry out, had I been so rash as to intend it, my foolish demonstration. It was at this period I observed especially the behavior of the dogs. Up to this time they had been quiescent, lying upon the grass in the full enjoyment of its freshness; but now they both got up, and I felt on each side of me the pressure of their bodies. They were evidently frightened, and, by the casual glance I gave them, induced to do so by the sensation of their touch, I saw that they were looking with every symptom of terror at the figure that stood so near us without a motion. And the figure. It never once turned its head directly toward me, but seemed to fix its look eastward over where the pine-trees broke the clear horizon on the murder-hill. This inert pose was preserved but for a moment; for, as quick as the flash of gunpowder, it wheeled as upon a pivot, and, making one movement, as of a man commencing to step out toward the wall, was gone! To my vision it never crossed the space between where it had stood and the outline of the shade thrown by the trees upon the ground. One step after turning was all I saw, and then it vanished. Can I describe this figure you will ask; and my reply is that I can, but not exactly in such a way as to satisfy the chief’s business-like interrogatory. Before I go any farther, I must say that, as I had nothing to do in getting up this apparition, I do not see how any one can poke fun at me simply because I was there to see it. A man sees a star fall; he has no agency in the eccentric transaction, and is he to be ridiculed because there happens to be a tack loose in the celestial carpet whose dropping out he witnesses and tells of, and happens not to be astronomer enough to explain? Here was a moral and physical tack loose somewhere and somehow, and I had struck my vision on its point. What I saw I relate exactly as it happened, and nothing more, though I may be induced to meet the usual objections to the possibility of its occurrence, in a later portion of this narrative. I could, if I felt so inclined, stop my recital and talk by the folio about this affair; but it was a very different matter at the moment when that something, which would not reply to me, stood in the night light, clear and distinct as a marble statue, and cast one glance over toward the hill that held among its gray rocks a stain that would last there forever. But I half promised to describe this figure, this appearance, this apparition, and a few words will answer. It looked like painted air to begin with. An artist, sitting by my side and following my ideas, might render it to the life or death; but he would have to blend his matter-of-fact pencil with the vague vehicles of spiritualistic imagination. In the first place, there was no elaborate toilet; indeed I could not make out the fashion of the garment, taking it for granted that it was draped in the usual costume, being too absorbed by the complex and somewhat agitated train of thought which, commencing with the assumption that it was my friend, and which was suddenly relinquished, leaving me exposed to the rapid transitions of intellectual deductions so singularly called into action and so totally at variance with my habitual mental or nervous equanimity. I felt as a drowning man might feel who, admitting the fact that the water has got the master of him, lets that primary incident take care of itself, and looks only to some object by whose aid he may relieve himself from the desperate catastrophe. I was occupied more in the effort to recognize a human being in the figure that was before me than in making a tailor’s analysis of his apparel. One thing was evident,—he looked dark-gray from head to foot. Body he had, and legs, and arms, and a head; but the face I could not distinctly see, as he turned it from me; but there was an outline such as can be traced in shadows thrown by a dim lamp upon a rough-plastered wall,—and that is all I can say about it. Of course it is unsatisfactory, but I had no means or time for a fuller diagnosis.

XI.

THE TESTS.

The effect left upon me when I found myself alone was not exactly that of alarm, but rather a determination to test, if it might be possible, this appearance or delusion, or whatever it might be; and, instantly turning from the spot, I walked back to the house. The presence of persons in the room, the light, the furniture itself, had an influence to calm whatever of perturbation I was sensible of from the strange interview through which I had so rapidly passed. I debated now in my mind with regard to the test I should apply. Was it a ghost? That was in part the question, but not the entire inquiry; for I could not come all at once to the conclusion that it was an undoubted visitant from the dead man’s realm. While pondering over these doubts, an adventure of my youth came vividly back to my recollection, and seemed to offer itself as a means by which I should judge of my present experience; and, thinking it may amuse my reader, I see no reason why I should not add it to my narrative.

A goodly number of years ago, I was a student at a college in the State of Maryland, not far from the town of Gettysburg. From the plateau of the mountain, at the base of which the college was situated, I have been told, the smoke as it actually poured from the guns, not after it floated miles away, was seen during the progress of the great and inexplicable battle that has made the town one of historic importance.

Upon a certain occasion, it being a holiday, I went over to the neighboring village of ——, intending to have a free-and-easy time with smuggled cigars,—smoking being a virtue unrecognized by the dignitaries of the college, and forbidden under heavy pains and penalties within the sacred and unfumigated precincts. I had other objects, perhaps, justifiable to youth, and unnecessary to dilate upon now. At all events, I was away from college, and away I remained until the advancing evening warned me that I had somewhat of a walk before I could get back. There were two ways by which I could return,—one by the common county road, and a shorter but more difficult route by a narrow path leading partially over and along the mountain ridge. I chose the latter. So I bade adieu to the village and its barber, who was our contraband chief in the cigar smuggle, and at whose house I had enjoyed a comfortable but uncollegiate dinner, and with whose pretty daughter (all girls are pretty to college boys) I had taken a precious lesson in flirtation, almost engaging myself to marry her after I had graduated and seen my way clearly to parental acquiescence. Poor barber’s daughter! I wonder how many other lads made innocent love to her and vaguely hinted similar magnificent proposals? But away I went up the mountain, under the trees, in and out with the path, by the rocks, by the torrent, and ere I had advanced a mile, the moon (did you ever see a Middle States’ moon?) had stolen into the skies. The wind rose gently with the moon, as if it would make soft music for her, and the clouds accompanied her in muslin toilets; and so with the moon and the wind and the misty clouds I pursued my walk, smoking the last cigar of that blissful holiday.

My path led by the church, belonging to the college, half way up the mountain, and afterward by the old graveyard, walled in,—a crumbling and a neglected wall, over which you could step easily into the silent city. Arrived at this graveyard, I stopped and looked down upon the college. The lights were gleaming there; and, upon the fatal theory that a pleasure enjoyed under ban is sweeter than pleasure permitted, I resolved to finish my cigar before I made the final descent. But where could I smoke so near the college and be free from detection? Lingering on the path I might be detected and reported, and that would be fatal. In the graveyard? Who ever ventured there except the dead and the mourners, or a law-breaker? The very place I thought; and so I crossed over the shattered wall, and, selecting an entablature that was a sort of mortuary dining table supported by four brick legs, I stretched myself and fell into that luxurious enjoyment which only a true smoker can realize,—and of that class I was then, and am now.

The moon, by this time, was nearly above me, and so bright that a woman could have threaded her needle by its wonderful effulgence. I had not been many seconds on the table-like slab, before I heard a sound that somewhat startled me; but, after a moment’s reflection, I concluded it was the wind moaning round the old church that was at the upper end of the cemetery. Quieting myself with this belief, I pulled away at my cigar, now nearly at its last gasp, when I heard a repetition of the sound; but this time it seemed to proceed directly from underneath the slab! The affair was getting peculiar, and my nervous system was undergoing that singular process so well expressed by the phrase goose-fleshy; for if the sound did come from under the slab it could not be the wind, for it was not like anything the wind could do with such materials. But while I debated the question, the utterance struck upon my ear again, and this time it was an unmistakable groan, as if human or inhuman lips had given it expression. The goose-flesh arrangement continued to develop itself, but not to such an enormous wrinkle as to prevent my peeping over the side of the stone to see if I could catch a sight of the groan or the groaner. I feel convinced, though I did not test it, that the extraordinary phenomena so often alluded to by novelists did occur, and that my hair did stand on end, when I saw directly under me, out in the moonlight, a battered, withered leg covered by a dingy, mould-soiled piece of cloth, with a boot attached, but such a boot that no human ingenuity of St. Crispinism could repair. The boot looked like the skeleton of a boot, as the pantaloons looked like a skeleton of pantaloons. They were to all intent and purposes supernatural fractures. While I looked, the groaning was repeated, and simultaneously another leg, another piece of mould-stained cloth, another tattered boot was thrown out of the deep shadow and softly placed crosswise over the other, following the example of knight-errantry sculpture. I had stretched myself, supported by my hands, to the edge of the slab, and could see distinctly these movements and appearances; and my mind was so completely divided between the physical results and the naturally suggestive idea of the supernatural, as to leave me in a medium state of amused courage and inherent superstition.

But it was necessary for me to act, and so, without further hesitation, I supported my body on my arms reversed, and made a long leg of it, stretching myself entirely free, of course, from a contact with the mouldy-looking arrangement that protruded into the moonlight. Having established my position at a proper distance of observation, I at first hesitated whether to go away or not,—a vague and not unnatural fear suggesting the idea of flight; a positive but artificial conviction determining me to remain and see the matter out. One of the greatest and best lessons, and for which there should be a professorship established in every college in the country, is the lesson of self-command. Make it at the commencement of your life a speciality, and it will serve you in after years as a guardian of your honor, and sometimes of your life itself. It makes you well behaved, careful of the feelings of others, tolerant and independent, and is the safeguard of a woman’s virtue and the potent spear by which truth may be distinguished from error. By a strong effort I reached the point of self-command, and so my legs were as firmly fixed to the spot, as those limbs of mystery peeping out from the entablature of the tomb. My next act was to catch hold of the feet and pull at them,—pull the whole affair into the light and determine what it was. When I had drawn this moaning body forth, I lifted it by a vigorous effort, and stood it against the tomb. The head fell backward and the moon shone full upon the face. The face was swollen with a livid kind of puffiness, and the eyes closed fast. I placed my hand upon the forehead and felt the moisture, clammy and revolting. The hands fell heavily by the sides, and a tremor ran over and shook the figure as if with palsy, and groans and moans came quick, and as they came I shook the thing by its shoulders; but there was no awakening as yet of the closed orbs and apparently dead brain. I worried myself no longer, but drew the loathsome figure away from the grave-stone and commenced an advance toward the broken wall. It moved heavily, but at last we reached the boundary, and with difficulty got over it. The mass was passive; I was very positive. I went down the mountain, passed the college, and, reaching a cottage, I rapped upon the door. A woman opened it, and, giving my ghost a push, he staggered or fell into her arms, or upon the floor, I know not which, and this dingy spectre was no more nor less than the hard-drinking husband of one of the college outside servants. Here, then, was the test case which came back to me, with all its vivid incidents and extraordinary suggestions, to help me out of my present dilemma? In the adventure of my youth there was at first a large supply of the ghostly element, and, had I fled the investigation, perhaps nothing would have disabused my mind of its supernatural character. The man would in all probability have been left until early morning in undisturbed possession of his unique apartment, and, when restored to his senses, would have been the very last to initiate a revelation. It would have been a confession fraught with serious consequences,—in the first place with regard to his situation under the college,—and it would not have contributed largely to his domestic felicity. To peach on me would have been to implicate himself, and, as drunkenness is morally a worse crime than the smoking of a cigar, he would have been the first to have suffered decapitation. It was my self-possession alone that turned one of the most reliable ghost incidents into a tale of beastly absurdity. If I was so near seeing a ghost’s legs on that night, which turned out to be no ghost’s legs at all, why might there not be some chance of my visitor on the brow of the hill to-night turning out to be some vagrant more wildly drunk than the drunken college-phantom?

XII.

TESTS.

I again left the house, having tarried there not over ten minutes, resolved to revisit the locality where the puzzle had presented itself. After calling the dogs,—for I wished them to be with me to make the test complete, and also to observe their conduct,—I searched in every likely place to find out if my friend had not returned; for I still had a vague suspicion running in my head, that after all he might possibly have succeeded in some unaccountable way, in enveloping me in the maze of a ghostly manifestation. But I searched for him in vain; and, to settle all doubt relative to his agency in the affair, I will state that he did not return home that night until ten o’clock or after, driving by the road leading through Jamaica Plain.

I then went down the garden road, and stood upon the very spot I had previously occupied. As I said before, I wished to see how the dogs would act should the figure make its appearance; and even before I reached my former position I was struck by the reluctant manner in which they followed me,—but I managed to get them on, and so there we three were; but where was that eccentric fourth?

He was not there. Some people will say I had been controlled by the solemn influences of the night and the ghastly associations blended with the scene and all its gloomy neighborhood, and consequently was in a very fit condition to receive a demonstration and accept it as supernatural; but I will at all times maintain that when I first went down that garden walk that night, and saw the form that I took to be that of my friend, I was, as I have previously most minutely and accurately explained, not in that spiritualistic, sympathetic condition. But on the second visit I confess that I was in a better temperament to receive the influences of night and scene and associations, and to which you may add the incident which gives such a weird aspect to my narrative. In the first, my condition was natural and eminently composed, and yet I had the vision; in the second, with all my nerves stretched in expectancy, I saw nothing. Now, how was that? I stood still as a living man can stand, and fixed my eyes upon the wall where the figure had first appeared; but all was moveless and silent. The old wall and the shadows looked as they did before. I turned quick as thought, and tried to surprise any faint glimpse of anything that might have come to the spot where the apparition had stopped in the interval of my withdrawn attention; but there was nothing but the short grass backed by the dark wood where the deeds of blood had been perpetrated. I even looked to see if anything was lying down to avoid my scrutiny, walked over to the spot, and then in a straight line to the wall, supposing it was possible I might find some trace of a presence. I found nothing.

I was therefore satisfied as far as this test was carried; but still I was not content. A strange desire, which I possibly did not attempt to check, had taken possession of me to carry my investigation farther; but it was a wild, and, all things considered, a fearful experiment; at least I so viewed it when it was first suggested to my mind. It must be understood that I only submitted even to the contemplation of this ultimate and extraordinary test after I had determined that what I had seen was not a visual delusion or in fact a human being. A sense of profound conviction seized me and impelled me to admit that something had occurred to my experience beyond my ability to reconcile by the ordinary rules of explanation. In fine, I for the first time during the progress of these transactions suddenly connected the mystery with the murders. I had given common sense and resolute examination a fair chance to account for that abrupt whirl, that sudden vanishing, that terror of the dogs, their failure to recognize their master, or to attack the stranger,—either of which they would have done under ordinary circumstances,—and now I had no power to resist the conclusion that was so powerfully forced upon me. I pretend to no peculiar bravery, though not entirely destitute of that quality, shared with man by the rat-terrier and the rat himself, having enough of it for all the needs and purposes of a very good-natured and non-aggressive man; and the chief feature of my courage is, my not having a fear of myself; that is, I am not backward in entertaining myself with proposals to undertake matters which, to some other men, of abler judgment, might appear a little too venturesome; and here I was about to attempt a task that possibly only an animal should engage in, knowing nothing of human mysteries, or a pauper, for a reward; and even the pauper I think would have debated longer than I did whether he would not rather steal the recompense, or starve a little longer. It was no less a thing than to visit the spot off in those gloomy woods where the body of the girl was found lying among the rocks.

This fancy was of a twofold character. One was, that since I was in for testing, I would go over there and test my nerves; the other was an idea that, since I had been launched into the regions of the marvellous, possibly it might be made manifest to me there in those deep seclusions, on that spot,—a revelation that would lift the veil of mystery that enshrouded the fate of the two unfortunates, and also unravel the difficult maze in which I had been involved. Perhaps I would see that figure there,—that figure a parent, or relative of the girl, who had come to me that night, impressing me to the interview. I could not but think of the spiritualistic theory of the sympathies between the living and the dead,—the theory indeed of all Christian, and, for that matter, of all heathen sects, and there, and nowhere else, I might have revealed to me the name of the man who had done those hideous acts. Surely, I was in a singular predicament. I had either seen a ghost, or I had not, and I felt unwilling to let things remain in the condition of unsettled doubt, not caring for the rest of my life to be the prosy relator of a ghost story, which my listener could accuse me of having left unsettled and unfinished for the want of nerve to examine to its climax. Determined upon putting my duplex test into execution, I returned to the house to inform my friends that I was going out for a stroll,—not an unusual thing with me,—and to make some little arrangement that I thought personally needful in case of untoward accidents; for, independent of the peculiar intention I was about to fulfil, there were reasons why I should not go unprepared for physical contingencies.

The whole country, it will be remembered, was in a very disorganized state,—many people thrown out of employment, and others returned from scenes of strife and bloodshed, with an education habituated to deeds of violence. So I armed myself with a companion charged to the lips with a counteracting but defensive species of explosive violence,—a thing that could speak seven times, and always with effect if the delivery was good.

On the theory of testing my nerves, in connection with the ghost theory, I at once resolved to dispense with the dogs, for their presence would have been companionship and a reliance apart from my individuality. My pistol was not taken for the ghosts, but for ghost-makers. Now that I reflect upon it all in my cooler moments, I must frankly admit that, after what had happened, this trip had something of the fearful in it, which my placid reader will not have the heart to deny, and nothing would induce me to repeat it, unless there were motives of a higher grade than those which ruled me then. It was, in fact, an enterprise totally at variance with common sense and common personal convenience and comfort. It was now about nine o’clock. No change had occurred in the shape of the night,—that is, no clouds had culminated in the skies, and yet no moon had been conjured up by astronomy, or by lovers’ incantations. It was a lonely walk down the hill, over the very spot where my silent visitor had so lately stood to look at these very woods,—that very spot to which my steps were now directed. Darker it was down in the valley, with the hill to my back and the great mass of foliage apparently near enough for me to touch; but on I went, giving no time for reconsideration, on to the fence which I crossed, and then I was one of the black things in the intense gloom of the forest.

Not a sound but the crackling of dead branches under my feet in the pathway,—sounds that I felt might send the notice of my approach to whatever was waiting for me by the cross and the immortelle on the murder-rock. Though the broken branches were sentinelling my advent, I kept on, with a cold shiver now and then quivering all over me, but never for a moment going deeper than the skin. Brain and heart as yet were true to their purpose of folly, that seemed like madness to me then. It did not take me long to reach the objective point of my journey. I have described the spot in another part of this narrative, and therefore will not repeat its topographical characteristics; suffice to say that it was somewhat different in sentiment than when I had looked upon it in the sunshine. Then I had seen a visitor sitting quietly and unconcerned on the ridge of the rock, looking down, with a cigar between his lips, at the spot—always a thrilling sight—where the girl had fallen; and I had seen young girls munching sandwiches around the scene, and jabbering of the massacre of one of their mates; but now, with nothing there but the night and the spirit of the event, the weird-looking trees with their limbs reaching hither and thither in such a way as to make me feel that I was beneath the dome of an iron-barred prison-room. I hold it to be utterly impossible for any man, unless he is brutalized and of a sympathetic nature no higher than a quadruped, to be alone in such a place, with such a preface as it had been my fate to meet with, and not experience an accelerated throb of his pulse. I do not say that he is necessarily bound to be frightened, but something so near akin to it that only our self-conceit prompts us to draw the line of difference.

I was there to submit myself to one test, and apply the other to what I had previously seen. The one I was already undergoing; for it may readily be believed that an immense amount of subtle pressure was placed upon me. The accumulated proofs of a lifetime, as to the existence of unearthly presences and imperfectly disproved legends of ghostly visitations and adventures, bore down upon me with the wizard night and spectral forms of trees. And when I placed myself exactly on the blood-stained spot, I looked around with the certainty of being confronted by the apparition whose existence I was there to determine. Now, thought I, is the opportunity,—this the place for a revelation. What other man will ever come again with so foolhardy a brain and give the witnesses or the victim a chance so appropriate and so melodramatic? If any one does venture upon the trial, to a scene so fresh with gory associations, from my soul I pity him, and would blame; but this species of curiosity is not generally diffused throughout society. But I was there and awaited whatever issue might transpire. I was doubtless in a sublimated condition of rapport, as the mediumistic philosophers term it; a human instrument of a thousand strings, that the feeblest ghost might play upon with ever so withered a hand. But none came to inform or frighten me, and not a sound other than the low clicking of the wood insects broke the magic ring of silence that closed in with such profundity of pathos this terrible situation. To attempt to go away, I found required more nerve than to get there; for now I must turn my back and place myself in the traditional position in which cowardice is said to place its victims; but, with the cold creepings renewed with double energy, I turned and walked with an excited composure away from the spot, down the hill, through the gateway that opens eastward into the Dedham road, and then, with half a dozen sighs of relief, straight home.

“Can you recognize that man again?” from the chief, is always sounding in my ear. What man? Did I not go to the place where he should have met me, if he was in any way witness to that murder? Sometimes I think it was the man himself, but not in the flesh. If in the flesh, he never would have come so near the scene of his hideous mischief; if in the spirit, then he had committed suicide, or died of the disease of terror, and was wandering in the accomplishment of a curse and an expiation. Who knows but what it may be so, and who can say it is not so, any more than I can assert it is so? Or was it the father, who, since I wrote the description above, I have heard was no longer living? If it was the father’s spirit, then I have something to say about that matter; and when I said that I could recognize the man, I meant I might be able to do so if there is a photograph of him that I could get at. Close and open your eyes quickly while looking at a person passing by your window, and you will have some idea of the view I had of the profile of this vision. I have seen in official possession, filed away among the other papers appertaining to this case, something that evinced that this dead father was taking active interest in the search after the murderer. I am not at liberty to recite the mode of that interest, nor am I called upon by any logical process to affirm that he does take an interest, or to deny that he does. I only know that there are similar circumstances connected with this phase of the subject, that a very large class of the community would attach importance to, but all involved in such a labyrinth of mystery as to defy positive recognition and the ordinary tests of evidence.

Assume as a fact that a spirit, taking to itself the form of a man, had appeared to me, there at once grows out of that admission this other question: Why should so extraordinary a circumstance, such a miracle, in fact, have been developed? For what purpose was that spirit there? Denying, as I do, that it would have been a miracle, I take up the question and attempt my reply. In the first place, I am no sectarian; least of all am I a spiritualist; and if I am anything of a creed man,—which the Lord grant I am!—I am of a church that is founded on the system of marvels, as indeed, for that matter, are all churches, Christian or Pagan. The Saviour of mankind, let me with all reverence say, is admitted to have been duplex in character,—mortal for our sympathies, divine for our worship. If he suffered death,—which some doubt he did, but only the semblance of death,—his spirit was no more existent after his execution than before it, and consequently he had power to rise from the sepulchre where they had laid him and appear to the soldiers and to the holy women. That he did appear we have the evidence of the great apostles and the contemporary legends of the Roman narrators. Indeed, it is not only asserted that he was manifest after death, but that ghosts walked the streets of Jerusalem, and when the veil of the temple was rent, the graves gave up their dead. These were the phenomena of a sublime epoch,—an epoch that in the death of a God was grander and more inexplicable than the incident of the earth’s formation, and that of the stars and skies that are over it. All events have their purposes, and I can see the purpose here that should evoke these wonders. His mission had reached the point where the spiritual manifestations must overshadow the recollections of his corporeal existence, and prove to the world, by tangible exhibition, that beyond the grave there was a life. The Scriptures teem with the legends of spirits,—of ghosts, if you like that word better,—and men of all the known wisdom of those days believed in them, because they seemed to have seen them. Why should they have been prevalent then, and not now? Who can dare answer that question, or dare deny, with proof to back the denial, that such things never did exist, or, existing, appear to human vision? As well tell me that the same vegetables did not have life then as now, the same qualities of sand and superficial soil and rocks; and indeed have not certain plants, that were for centuries lost to human cultivation, been revived? Nothing is lost, nothing changes, though we call reproduction change, and flatter ourselves that we have spoken a great philosophy. Why is the world full of ghost-stories outside of the Scriptures? Because ghost-stories have been veritable facts,—these lay ghost-stories travelling alongside of the clerical ghost-stories of the Inspired Book, and substantiating to the common appreciation of all mankind the veritableness of the Bible. Who knows but that they are the vehicles by which Supreme Wisdom conveys to the intelligence of the unwise and the unlettered, the solemn truth of a hereafter? Who so arrogant in his wisdom as to be able to rise to the proof that it may not be so? The atrocity of self-conceit is more terrible than the atrocity of ignorance; the one is an active crime, the other a passive submission. The impossible means the possible. It is a favorite dogma with the utilitarian doctors, that nothing is impossible to the genius of man. Is there anything impossible to our Creator, other than the impossibility of making a mistake? If man invents a machine which defies all the previous laws, or theories supposed to be laws because nothing had happened to prove that they were not laws, are we to reject it on that account, and because it happens to be beyond our uneducated and unprepared capacity? Is the Creator of all to be limited and only his creature unlimited? How often, in the midst of a great accident, has not some mind suggested a redress totally at variance with the rules by which the accident was produced, creating a surprise to usual circumstances, and checking the catastrophe before it could recover its equanimity and prearranged and understood mode of conduct! Cannot the Maker interpose at his pleasure such surprises? But we will be told that he never interrupts the harmonious action of his great rules. Where do we find these rules so as to enable us to say when they are infringed or deviated from? How long have we been in possession of the habits of the beaver and the bee? and yet they were a part of his great rules and system of order. Every day science is bringing new lights to bear upon old ant-hills as well as upon old mountains, and the shadow of a fern-leaf on a rock, the ghost of a fish-bone in a strata are sufficient for a theory on the momentous and mysterious history of our own illustrious race. If scattered bones of a mammoth, when reunited by the wire-work of a naturalist, are evidences of Noah’s or Deucalion’s flood, where are we to draw the line upon circumstantial evidence and testimony in substantiation of other facts and possibilities?

There are more tangible proofs of the existence of ghosts than there are of the existence of Noah’s ark. The hush of the night, the solitude of forests, the loneliness of limitless prairies suggest, to the most unimaginative mind something more than the physical sense of desertion and isolation; and yet that is no proof that a mystic band of weird spirits are with you in those dreary hours and wanderings; but whatever is suggested proceeds from a thing that is able to suggest, and whatever the mind grapples with of the material or the immaterial exists in some form or other, intangible, but no less existent. The opponents of the theory of the existence of ghosts, and their power to appear, use one word that conveys all their logic, and that word is the contemptuous vulgarism, Bosh! And then they will advance with weaker argument the logic of bold contradiction, as if they had just returned from a trip into the regions of the future and an examination of the powers and rules and intents of the Providence, with an exact catalogue of his attributes and short-hand notes to be written out at their leisure, of all he has done, is doing, and is going to do. Faraday could analyze vapor, but, with all his retorts and crucibles and chemicals, he never could weigh a scintilla of a human thought. Such men grasp vapor in their hand, and will tell you of what it is composed; and they tell you truly, and we, though consciously ignorant, have no foothold for a doubt. The preacher rises in his pulpit, and, from his sectarian books, and more sectarian training, interprets to you the sublimest dogmas of the Apocalypse; and woe to the member of his flock who raises an impious question against his dictatorial assertions. But if your neighbor,—near whom you have been living all your life, whose word stands pre-eminent in all matters of business, into whose care you would place your wife or your daughter, and to whose honor you would leave it to execute your last will and testament, in behalf of the loved ones,—was to tell you that he had seen a ghost, and calmly relate the incident with the proofs and the tests, you would be very likely to laugh in his face, and tell the next person you met that you were afraid neighbor so-and-so was a little weak in the upper story, or was telling what was not true.

The elegant dictators of theory speak of the belief in the existence of ghosts as the “vulgar belief in ghosts and goblins,” and get rid of it in that summary manner. But the very fact that it is vulgar, as they term it, is a strong point against them. If we could get the Scriptures pure and exempt from mixed and muddled interpretations, free from the garbage of a host of foreign lingual transformations, and in its original “Vulgate,” we should not have the world troubled with more creeds than they can invent gods to preside over, or devils to operate in. The word vulgar is not to be used always as inclusive of the “low-born and the uneducated.” The vulgar in this country believe in the imperialism of the ballot-box; in Russia and Prussia and England, and elsewhere, of monarchies, in the divine right of kings; and demagogues in all realms, like dogmatists of all creeds, have no faith at all, but use the belief of the masses for their own purposes. With the majority of mankind exists the supreme attribute of common sense, and yet they all, more or less, believe in the existence of ghosts. The hair-splitters of theology and other ethics, for sake of discipline, would drive the old stage-coach where the people would rush the locomotive; and as in the beginning, fishermen and carpenters were the recipients of divine truths, or the media of revelations, so now, while abstract and abstruse sciences occupy the minds of the enlighteners, the plain truths of Christian doctrine are held with other beliefs, relatively necessary to our nature, in the legendary, gossiping, and enduring belief of the masses.