THE festival we lately celebrated (I mean All-fools'-day), always brings to my mind a most singular adventure which happened to me in 1837, while staying for the Easter holidays at Bleaklawns, my old schoolfellow Harry Fenwick's place in the north of England. The way it came about was this.

It was a rude evening in the end of March (Easter, it will be recollected, fell early that year); half a score of neighbours, including the clergyman of the parish and his wife, had dined at Bleaklawns, and we were sitting in a close-drawn circle about the great, old-fashioned parlour chimney, and listening to the wind as it roared in the leafless trees, and wailed and sobbed at the windows of the house, almost like a human being.

To such an accompaniment it is not wonderful that the conversation ran on shipwrecks and perils of the deep, and that from this subject it passed, by an easy transition, to that of murders. Hence, at the instance of a fair member of our conclave, whose tongue bore the slightest touch of the music of Munster, and who voted murders common-place, it was on the point of leaping the grave, and going headlong into the chapter of ghost-stories, when two of the company entered a protest.

I was one. I objected to ghoststories, on the ground of their manifest antagonism to the spirit of an enlightened nineteenth century. The other protesting party went on opposite grounds. This was a young lady who had come from a greater distance than the other guests, and was to sleep at Bleaklawns, and who declared that if

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she were to hear a ghost-story in an old house like that, where it was impossible not to believe in such things, she would not be able to close an eye for terror the whole night.

Our hostess, upon this, observed, for the encouragement of her young guests, that at Bleaklawns there was happily no occasion for fears of the kind; since, ancient as the house certainly was, it had never had the reputation of being haunted, nor had either its present, nor, as far as she knew, any former occupants, ever experienced any disturbances in it which they were tempted to refer to supernatural causes.

"Well, do you know," said another of the party (a rather forward young fellow, who was but lately come to the neighbourhood), "I think that almost a pity. Such a house as this ought to be haunted. We must try and conjure a ghost into it, Harry, out of the old Fenwick vault under the church. Perhaps Mr. Hammond would lend us a helping hand. What would you think, sir, of reading the burial-service backwards?"

The clergyman looked grave, and said Mr. Fenwick should be very thankful that his house was free from all intrusions of the world beyond the tomb; and that the subject was by no means one to be treated in a light and jesting spirit. To this our host agreed; and added, that Mr. Emerson (that was the forward man's name) himself would adopt a very different tone with respect to such matters, if he were to spend a short time in some houses to which he (Harry Fenwick) could give him an introduction.

"Harry," said I, "I'm not quite

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sure that I understand you. Do you mean to say that there are houses in England, or, indeed, anywhere else, in which such things as Mr. Emersonjestingly, I am sure-just now spoke of, are really to be met with ?"

"Fifty," answered Fenwick, "to my own knowledge."

"Haunted houses!" said I.

"Houses," replied he, "which the people who live in them believe to be haunted; houses in which things are heard and seen, which there is no explaining, but on the supposition that they are haunted."

But the nineteenth century

began I.

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My dear fellow," interrupted Fenwick, “if you can get the other world to believe in the nineteenth century, your business is done; but the misfortune is, you can't; and so, in spite of the nineteenth century, the houses I tell you of are haunted."

"But what kind of houses?-houses belonging to what class of people ?" demanded Mr. Emerson, "for a great deal depends upon that."

"Parsonage-houses," answered Har

ry, some of them; and some, houses like this; and some, houses belonging to respectable people in the middle class, people quite as well able to form a judgment upon the subject as any one here."

"I should be glad," said I, "to have an opportunity of passing some time in one of these houses. I shrewdly suspect I should find a clue to the mystery: an unprejudiced person, whose mind is previously made up on the subject of investigation, is not so easily put on a false scent.'

"Then you would like to spend a night in a haunted house?" cried my old schoolfellow.

"In a house having the reputation of being haunted," answered I, "by all means."

I

"Then, by all means, you shall," said he: " there is a house not five miles off that will just suit you. have no doubt that I can get you leave to pass a night in it; and if you come out of it in the morning, and talk to us of the nineteenth century, I give you up."

"Mr. Fenwick," said the clergyman, "I must express my hope that you will reflect very seriously on what you are about to do, before you determine on

sending your friend to that awful house. And you, my dear sir," added he, turning to me, "would also do well not to play with things, the dark and terrible nature of which you are far from being aware of."

I was astonished. "What! reverend sir," I exclaimed, "am I to understand that you, a clergyman, and, as I can afford my humble testimony from having listened to your most excellent, most edifying, and most logical discourse on Sunday last, a clergyman of no ordinary amount of talent, of erudition, and of sound good sense-am I, I would ask, to understand that you attach credit to the exploded tales handed down to us from an age groping in the darkness of an unreasonable superstition?—that you, in fact, believe in what are called ghosts?"

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"I am sorry to say," was the clergyman's answer, "that I have had proof-proof most unwelcome-that the tales of which you speak are not so idle as the present age is too generally disposed to believe."

"That you have seen ghosts!"

"No, not seen; but I have certainly had indications of the proximity of a being no longer of this earth. I have heard sounds which could not otherwise be accounted for; and Mrs. Hammond, and other members of our household, have not only heard, but have actually seen the being in question."

"Bless my soul!" said I; "this is a most surprising circumstance. And a gentleman so collected in the pulpit. May I, reverend sir, pray you to put me in possession of the circumstances of this very extraordinary case of what you will pardon me for calling mental hallucination. It will be of advantage to all the company to hear them explained."

"I must begin, then," commenced the clergyman, "by mentioning, that, before my being appointed to the living which I now hold, I was for a short time curate at Wester Hilton, a market-town between four and five miles from this place. When I first went to that curacy, which was about fifteen years ago, strange reports were current about a house in the outskirts of the town, which was said to be haunted; and although I laughed at these things when they first came to my ears, yet, finding that the whole

town believed them, that sober, business-like people-the last I could suppose to be given to anything like romancing or flights of fancy-spoke of them as undoubted facts, and that the owner of the house (a gentleman of the name of Greenborn) could neither live in it himself, nor get any one to take it off his hands-so that it had now for some years past stood empty I felt myself compelled to believe that there was something very extraordinary in the matter, although I was still very far from going the length of supposing that there was anything preternatural.

"To come to particulars-it was said that all kinds of inexplicable noises were continually heard in the house, chiefly at night, but sometimes even in the day-time; that the most frequent sound was that of a person walking through the rooms, or up and down the stairs; and, what was most curious, that the steps were like those of a club-footed person-that, in fact, it was not so much a walking as an uncouth kind of stumping that was heard, and which could not be listened to without feelings of the most strangely disagreeable kind. It was said that the doors would often open and shut of themselves, as the footsteps went into or out of the rooms, and that, still oftener, the sound of the opening or shutting of a door would be heard, while to the eye the door remained unmoved. Frequently sighs were heard ; sometimes, though not often, a slight laugh, and sometimes a low whispering that would continue for hours together, as if the being that made all these noises were talking to itself as it stumped along. It was not often that anything had been actually seen, though this had occurred too, the form of a woman having appeared to more than one person, at different times, when the club-feet were distinctly to be remarked. But it was observed that when the form was seen, the steps were inaudible, the spirit never manifesting itself to more than one sense at the same time. However, if two persons were together, it would sometimes be heard but not seen by the one, while it would be seen but not heard by the other.

"A circumstance that most painfully spoke for the authenticity of these stories was this: the appari

tion had been seen by the maidensister of Mr. Greenborn, and the shock had been so great as to derange her mind. This lady had the misfortune to have distorted feet, and the spectre appeared to her a perfect duplicate of herself: her insanity took the horrible form of fancying herself the spectre, and she was living in retirement and under restraint, in another house of her brother's, at the opposite side of the town.

"I was unmarried at this time, but an engagement already subsisted between me and the lady who is now my wife; and our union was delayed only till I should have got properly settled in my curacy, and be in possession of a suitable dwelling to bring my bride to. On first arriving at Wester Hilton, I had taken a small lodging sufficient for a single man, and then proceeded to make inquiries about a house, intending to see everything that was to be disposed of in the little town, and to choose the most agreeable. However, a month passed over, and I had met with nothing that would answer; another month, and I was no nearer to the object of my quest; a third month had begun, still no prospect of settlement, and all the impatience of an engaged man chafing in my breast! All at once I thought of Mr. Greenborn's house. It was a good house, and agreeably situated, had a nice garden, was out of the noise of the town -in fact it was the very place a newmarried lady would like to come home to. Why not take it at once? To be sure, there was all that talk about its being haunted, but how absurd it would be to suffer myself to be influenced by such nonsense! What rational being, in these days, believed in a haunted house? No, I would show the Wester Hiltonians that they had an enlightened man among them; I would make them ashamed of their superstition; I would put down the foolish tale which had so long frighted their town from its propriety: in short, my dear sir, I was extremely impatient to marry, and I wrote to Mr. Greenborn, proposing to become his tenant for the haunted house.

"Mr. Greenborn was glad to get a tenant, and let me have the house on reasonable terms. He wrote to his man of business at Wester Hilton, to put me in possession, and, next day,