two other columns, that very tolerably
represented arms. All was very vague and undefined,
and there was a total absence of minute details.
Nevertheless, if a party of schoolboys, on a
winter's day, had succeeded in making anything
half so like a man, out of snow, they would have
deemed themselves artists of no ordinary skill.
Whether this were a ghost or a lusus naturæ,
there was no doubt it was the spectral giant
of whom I had heard so much.

What was I to do? I felt monstrously
disinclined to proceed, and I did not relish the
notion of waiting till the form dispersed,
especially as, instead of rarefying it seemed to
become more dense, and I began to observe in
the head-like mass a pair of luminous spots, that
were by no means a bad imitation of eyes.
Should I go back? I rather think I should
have adopted that inglorious expedient, had I
not, on turning my head, perceived in my rear
some half a dozen smaller masses of mist,
which likewise vaguely resembled the human
form, and which, as they moved towards me,
were rendered singularly unpleasant by a sort
of chirping sound, of which they seemed to
be the source. I had often read of " gibbering"
ghosts, without precisely knowing the
signification of the participle, just as a cockney
poet freely writes about " glades," and " dells,"
and " dingles," without any very distinct picture
before his mind's eye. I perfectly understand
the meaning of it now.

The little ghosts, for so I must consent to
call them, as they exactly corresponded to the
spectral victims of cruelty of which I had heard,
were much more formidable than the big one,
and rendered retreat morally impossible. The
big ghost, at all events, stood still, but these
minor phantoms pressed close upon me—closer,
and closer—till I felt something extremely cold
and clammy touch my ungloved hand.

This was unbearable. A thrill of horror shot
through my whole frame, and instinct brought
to my mind—if mind I had at the time—the
memory of that harlequin's leap by which I
had once acquired such honourable distinction.
Taking a run, I darted, after the most approved
pantomime fashion, through the larger misty
form that stood immediately before me.

Never shall I forget the sensation of that
dreadful moment. I seemed to be passing
through a medium, cold beyond the power of
thermometrical expression, and at the same time
my ears were stunned by a shriek of agony that
might have come from the chained Prometheus.

It is not at all surprising that I was found
insensible on the road. A harlequin's leap, with
nobody to catch the leaper, is in itself no joke,
and here was a leap of the kind in question,
accompanied by the most aggravating
circumstances. How, as I afterwards heard, I was
picked up and carried back to the little inn, and
lay for a day or two in a very incapable
condition, I need not record at length. It is
sufficient to say that no bones were broken—
though I had been shaken enough to justify the
production of a moderate doctor's bill—and that
I soon found myself once more in the parlour of
the inn.

An old distich, hackneyed to death, teaches
us that

He who's convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

I once laid a wager that these lines were or were
not (I forget which) in Hudibras, and though I
do not remember the result of the search made
on the occasion, I perfectly recollect that I lost
half-a-crown. Never could the proverbial
expression be applied with more perfect accuracy
than to my mental case when I was in a
convalescent state. I had been convinced of the
existence of ghosts very much indeed against my
will—sorely against my will, in a most disagreeably
strict sense of the word—as many a bone in
my skin could testify. Hence I was determined
not to yield to such obtrusive convictions. I
would disbelieve more sturdily than ever.

Indeed, what more easily explained away than
the phantom giant? The beverages vended at
the hostelry were not of the best, and I had
imbibed rather more than my usual quantity while
listening to the interesting discourse in the
parlour when I entered the room. My mind
was filled with the ridiculous legend I had just
heard, and when I encountered a mist that had
no distinct shape at all, it was the easiest matter
in the world to accommodate to the shapeless
mass a form corresponding to the story. Without
any determining cause whatever, we all of
us, on occasion, make tolerably distinct images
out of clouds, burning coals, coffee-grounds, and
what not; and here was an obvious determining
cause why I should take a mist for a giant,
without an approach to that monomania which
made Don Quixote mistake a windmill for a
similar monster.

While I was vainly striving to scrape a
particle of amusement out of a local paper, two
persons entered the room who had been the
principal speakers in the memorable discussion.
One of them, according to his own assertion,
had actually seen the spectre; the other was an
obstinate disbeliever, newly arrived from
another district, and who, having no respect
whatever for the popular creed of the village,
simply doubted whether his informant was a
fool or a mendacious person.

The ghost-seer came in first, and had hardly
seated himself than he was joined by his former
adversary, who accosted him in a jeering tone:

"Well, Jones, have you seen anything of
your friend the ghost again?"

"About the ghost being my friend, Mr.
Nicolls, that's neither here nor there," answered
Jones; " but if I did not see it last night, I'm
a Dutchman."

"You may be a Dutchman, for all I know,"
brilliantly retorted Nicolls; " but, whether
Dutchman or no, you seem to be none the worse
for it."

"No, Mr. Nicolls, I flatter myself I have
seen that ghost rather too often to be much ruffled
when I come across it; and it is not those who