esence: I had not disturbed
_it_, and _it_ had no mission to _me_. What, then, was the imaginable
use of its crossing the room in a visible shape at all? Of course it
might have _been_ in the closet instead of _going_ there, as easily as
it introduced itself into the recess without entering the chamber in a
shape discernible by the senses. Besides, how the deuce _had_ I seen it?
It was a dark night; I had no candle; there was no fire; and yet I saw
it as distinctly, in colouring and outline, as ever I beheld human form!
A cataleptic dream would explain it all; and I was determined that a
dream it should be.

"One of the most remarkable phenomena connected with the practice of
mendacity is the vast number of deliberate lies we tell ourselves, whom,
of all persons, we can least expect to deceive. In all this, I need
hardly tell you, Dick, I was simply lying to myself, and did not believe
one word of the wretched humbug. Yet I went on, as men will do, like
persevering charlatans and impostors, who tire people into credulity by
the mere force of reiteration; so I hoped to win myself over at last to
a comfortable scepticism about the ghost.

"He had not appeared a second time--that certainly was a comfort; and
what, after all, did I care for him, and his queer old toggery and
strange looks? Not a fig! I was nothing the worse for having seen him,
and a good story the better. So I tumbled into bed, put out my candle,
and, cheered by a loud drunken quarrel in the back lane, went fast
asleep.

"From this deep slumber I awoke with a start. I knew I had had a
horrible dream; but what it was I could not remember. My heart was
thumping furiously; I felt bewildered and feverish; I sate up in the bed
and looked about the room. A broad flood of moonlight came in through
the curtainless window; everything was as I had last seen it; and though
the domestic squabble in the back lane was, unhappily for me, allayed, I
yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his way home, the then
popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage of this
diversion I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and
closing my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else but the song,
which was every moment growing fainter in the distance:----

"'Twas Murphy Delany, so funny and frisky,
Stept into a shebeen shop to get his skin full;
He reeled out again pretty well lined with whiskey,
As fresh as a shamrock, as blind as a