Betsy had an invalid friend in the village,
who lived alone in a small cottage, and passed
much of her time in an arm-chair. As Nancy,
so I shall call her, could not move much, she
indulged greatly in talk, and an acquaintance
who would drop in and gossip was to her the
most inestimable of blessings. Betsy and
another girl named Fanny were her most
frequent associates, and the new stock of learning
imparted by the former gave quite a fresh tone
to the ordinary conversation. Instead of talking
scandal about their neighbours, the girls actually
began to confine their discourse to matters that
concerned themselves. After much discussion,
it was resolved that one of the curious experiments
described by Betsy should be made in
due form, and that Nancy's residence should be
the scene of the operation. The circumstance
that this must be performed at midnight
presented no serious difficulty. Of course girls
could not expediently tell their mothers that
they were going to hold a sort of witches'
sabbath for the sake of beholding their future
husbands, but then Nancy had only to say that
she was more than ordinarily indisposed, and her
two friends had only to profess a benevolent
desire to sit up with the invalid, and thus every
obstacle to the meeting was removed.

The required process was as follows: A cake
was to be composed of certain materials, and
placed on the hearth shortly before midnight.
Against this cake each of the girls was to lay a
knife belonging to herself, and then all were to
watch in silence. About the hour of midnight,
the apparition of the future husbands might be
expected. Each of these would take the knife
belonging to his own bride, to whom alone he
would be visible, and would cut a slice of the
cake.

On the appointed evening all the preparations
had been made, with one exception. Betsy who
had bought a knife from a travelling pedlar the
day before, had unfortunately mislaid it, so, as
far as she was concerned, the experiment, it
seemed, would be imperfect. No matter, they
determined to get on as well as they could. If,
in trying to raise three ghosts one succeeds in
raising two, it is not such a great failure after
all. So Fanny and Nancy both placed their
knives, and Betsy joined them in watching the
cake, all keeping the required silence. As
midnight approached they felt oppressed by a
somewhat vague terror, and a very definite sleepiness,
while the circumstance that the fire went
out, and that not one of them dared to rekindle
it, by no means increased the cheerfulness of
the ceremony.

They were beginning to nod, and seemed far
more likely to behold their future husbands in
dream-land than on the surface of the earth,
when the twelve successive bangs of the church
clock striking midnight made them open their
eyes wide, and this done, they were by no
means inclined to reclose them, for every one
of them saw—something.

Fanny saw a young man of a neighbouring
village, with whom she had often flirted. He
seemed to drop down the chimney, and to stare
at the cake with stupid unexpressive eyes. At
last he picked up Fanny's knife, greedily carved
for himself an unbecomingly large slice of the
delicacy, wrapped it up in a cotten pocket
handkerchief, crammed it into the side-pocket of his
coat, and vanished.

Betsy, who had expected to see nobody,
beheld a perfect stranger, evidently a town-bred
young man of somewhat superior station. He
seemed wofully discomposed at not finding the
knife of his future bride, examined the cake on
all sides, and glanced hastily round the room, as
if he hoped to detect the missing article in
some obscure corner. His anxiety in the mean
while became terrible, and at last, with a look
of the most intense agony, he snatched from
his pocket a clasp-knife, with which he made
the expected incision. He then devoured the
slice with every appearance of deep abhorrence,
and dashing his knife furiously on the ground,
sank as it seemed through the floor.

As for the poor invalid Nancy, all she saw
was a coffin, which intruded itself on the mantelpiece,
and stood like a great clumsy
chimney-ornament, bowing forward from time to time, as
if making a sort of ghostly salutation.

* * * *

The girls were not very comfortable next day.
Nancy's vision of the coffin was, of course,
anything but cheering to the habitually
melancholy invalid. Betsy's phantom, with his agony
and his rage, had not looked very promising, and
though she picked up his knife, which had
remained open, and carefully put it in a box devoted
to the safe custody of articles precious rather
from their association with some sentiment than
from their pecuniary value, it was with a feeling
of decided uneasiness. Fanny's shadowy sweetheart
had, indeed, looked vulgar and commonplace
enough, but there is something even in the
most loutish of ghosts that will affect the
equanimity of the most light-minded beholder.

Let us now see how the predictions of that
fatal night were fulfilled.

Fanny's affections, which were not worth much,
had for some time been pretty equally balanced
between two young swains, whom I will
respectively call Hob and Nob. Choice, indeed,
was somewhat difficult in this case, so exactly
did one match the other in the absence of every
attractive quality. However, Hob's ugly spectre
had condescended to show itself, and Hob was
therefore selected as the happy man. The
marriage did not turn out very well. Hob soon
began to make his wife uneasy by stopping very
late at the ale-house, and then he reversed the
current of her feelings by using her so ill, that she
dreaded his return even more than his absence.
Moreover, she had the mortification of seeing
Nob, who married an ugly girl from a neighbouring
village, settle down into a very thriving
and respectable clod.

Betsy had almost forgotten all about the cake
and knife, and was trying to look about for a
sweetheart among the home-produce of the
district, when the London coach brought down a