334 THE LITERATURE OF GHOSTS. course of human events, just as powerfully as if the ghost had flesh and blood, or the voice were a veritable pulsation of articulated air. The only thing that annoys me is a contemptuous and supercilious denial of the facts." "I hold with you, Julian," said Owen. "Take for instance the innumerable recorded instances where intimation has been given of a friend's or relative's death by the simultaneous appearance of his image to some one far absent, and unconscious even of his illness. There are four ways of treating such stories-the first is to deny their truth, which is, to say the least, not only grossly uncharitable, but an absurd and impertinent caprice adopted in order to reject unpleasant evidence; the second is to account for them by an optical delusion, accidentally synchronizing with the event, which seems to me a most monstrous ignoring of the law of chances; a third is to account for them by the existence of some exquisite faculty, existing in different degrees of intensity, and in some people not existing at all, whereby physical impressions are invisibly conveyed by some mysterious sympathy of organization—a faculty of which it seems to me there are the most abundant traces, however much it may be sneered and jeered at by those shallow philosophers who believe nothing but what they can grasp with both hands; and a fourth is to suppose that spirits can, of their own will, or by superior permission, make themselves sometimes visible to human eyes.' "Or," said Julian, “so affect the senses as to produce the impression that they are present to human eyes." "And to show you, Lillyston," said Owen, “how little I fear any natural explanations, and how much I think them beside the point, I'll tell you what happened to me only the other night, and which yet does not make me at all inclined to rationalize Hazlet's story. I had just put out the candle in my bedroom, when over my head I saw a handwritting on the wall in characters of light. I started out of bed, and for a moment fancied that I could read the words, and that somebody had been playing me a trick with phosphorus. But the next minute, I saw how it was; the moonlight was shining in through the little muslin folds of the lower blind, and as the folds were very symmetrical, the checkered reflection on the wall looked exactly like a series of words." "Well, now, that would have made a capital ghost story," said Lillyston, "if you had been a little more imaginative and nervous. And still more, if the illusion had only been partially optical, and partly the result of excited feelings." "It matters nothing to me," said Hazlet, rising, “ "whether the characters I saw were written by the finger of a man's hand or limned by spirits on the sensorium of the brain. All I know is that-thank God!-they were there." CHAPTER XXVII. JULIAN AND KENNEDY. "But there, where I have garnered up my heart; The fountain from the which my current runs, OTHELLO, Act iv. sc. 2. ST. WERNER'S clock, with "its male and female voice," has just told the university that it is nine o'clock. A little crowd of St. Wernerians is standing before the chapel door, and even the grass in the lawn in front of it is hardly sacred to-day from common feet. The throng, composed of undergraduates, dons, bedmakers, and gyps, is broken into knots of people, who are chatting together according to their several kinds; but they are so quiet and expectant, that the very pigeons hardly notice them, but flutter about and coo and peck up the scattered bread crumbs, just as if nobody was there. If you look attentively round the court, you will see, too, that many of the windows are open, and you may detect faces half concealed among the window curtains. Clearly everybody is on the look out for something, though it is yet vacation time, and only a small section of the men are up. The door opens, and out sail the seniors, more than A SCENE AT ST. WERNER'S. 337 ever conscious of pride and power. They stream away in silk gowns, carrying on their faces the smile of knowledge, even into their isolation, where no one can see it. For some reason or other they always meet in chapel, or, for all I know, it may be in the ante-chapel, to elect the St. Werner's scholars. And now the much talked of, much thought of, anxiously expected list, which is to make so many happy or miserable, is to be announced. On that little bit of paper which the chapel clerk holds in his hands as he stands on the chapel steps are the names which everybody has been longing to conjecture. He comes out and reads. There are nine scholarships vacant, of which five will be given to the third-year men, and four to Julian's year. The five third-year men are read first, and as each name is announced, off darts some messenger from the crowd to carry the happy intelligence to some expectant senior soph. The heads of listeners lean farther and farther out of the window, for the clerk speaks so loud as to make his voice heard right across the court; and the wires of the telegraph are instantly put into requisition, to flash the news to many homes, which it will fill either with rejoicing or with sorrow. And now for the four second-year scholars, who have gained the honor of a scholarship their first time of trial, and whose success excited a still keener interest. They are read out in the accidental order of the first entering of their names in the college books. Silence! the second-year scholars are DUDLEY CHARLES OWEN, (for the names are always read out at full length, Christian names and all;) ALBERT HENRY SUTON; and it is a very astonishing fact, but the fourth is HUGH JAMES LILLYSTON. Who would have believed it? Everybody expected Owen and Home to get scholarships their first time, and Suton was considered fairly safe of one; but that Kennedy should not have got one, and that Lillyston should, were facts perfectly amazing to all who heard them. St. Werner's was full of surprise. But, after all, they might have expected it; Kennedy had been grossly idle, and Lillyston, who had been exceedingly industrious, was not only well grounded at Harton in classics, but had recently developed a real and promising proficiency in mathematics; and it was this knowledge, joined to great good fortune in the examination, which had won for him the much-envied success. But not Kennedy? No! This result was enough most seriously to damp the intense delight which Julian otherwise felt in his own success, and that of his three friends. Julian, half expecting that he would be successful, had come up with Owen early in the day, and received the news from the porter as he entered the college. Kennedy and Lillyston were not yet arrived, and Julian went to meet the coach from Roysley, hoping to see one of them at least; for he was almost as anxious to break the disappointment gently to Kennedy, as he was to be the first to bear to his oldest school friend the surprising and delightful news of his success. They were both in the coach, and Julian was quite |