University of Virginia Library

A GHOST STORY.

In the vicinity of a town not many miles from Boston
was a dark glen, by the roadside, reputed to be haunted.
A traveller had been found here, many years before,
frozen to death, and his troubled spirit, with a disposition
to trouble everybody else, was said nightly to visit
the scene of his mortal termination, to have a “melancholy
satisfaction” all alone by himself, or with but such
auditors as he could press in to participate in the “services
of the evening.” An old fellow, who resided in
the town, and was fully imbued with the superstition,
had been one night to a husking, where the milk-punch
had circulated with more than common generosity, and
though “na fou,” he had enough on board to make him
comfortable and happy and

Towards the hour of breaking up, the conversation
turned upon the ghost, by whose dark hunting-ground
our friend had to pass, over a road raised up amid an
alder swamp, whose sad gloom could hardly be dispelled
by a noon-day sun, and where nothing but a ghost of the
most simple sort would wish to abide.

Burns said; and milk-punch we suppose to be about the
same in its courage-inspiring properties. Our hero
snapped his fingers at danger from ghosts and unholy
angels, and cared for neither a “bodle.” It was a milewalk,
good, to the spiritual precinct, and, thinking on
his way that it would be the part of prudence to prepare
for emergency, before he came to the dark gulf he was
to pass, he gathered a small artillery from a stone wall,
determined, if assaulted, to do battle manfully, for the
credit of the punch.

He had crossed a little brook that murmured beneath
the rude bridge above it, and had fairly got through
the dangerous part, as he considered it, of his journey,
and muttered to himself, in rather a tone of disappointment,
“I guess he must be sick; fog is n't good for
him,” when, lo! almost directly in the path before him
was an object that made him come to a stand at once.
It was all ghostly white, and he had barely time to look
at it, when a hideous groan came towards him on the
night air, which the milk-punch could hardly counteract
in its effect on his nervous system. Rallying however,
he selected a missile and let fly at his ghostly obstructor;
another groan, like the last bellow of expiring nature,
answered this assault. He hurled another huge stone,
and, gathering courage from the excitement, he blazed
away in a manner that would astonish either human or
superhuman antagonists, but without any apparent effect
upon the adversary, who stood his ground manfully,
or, perhaps we should say, ghostfully. As the last
stone of his ammunition was expended, however, with a
cry that echoed fearfully through the alders, the ghost
rushed towards him, and a violent shock laid him senseless
upon the ground, a vanquished man. He was found

the next morning pensively sitting by the road-side,
contemplating the scene of his night's exploit, with his
head in his hand.

He told his story, and pointed to the scattered missiles
for proof of what he had done; and he was believed, for
“to give up the ghost” was out of the question. But,
on going home, a small white two-year-old bull was seen
grazing by the road-side, and suspicion for a moment
crossed their minds that this might have been the ghost,
after all, seen through the medium of the punch; but this
would have been voted rank heresy against the ancient
institution of ghosts, and they held their peace.