nd along the swamp edge I passed with the night
falling fast. Twilight lingers long in our latitude and the gray
sky still lighted the path dimly, though the woods were black on
either side. The tranquillity of the home-like hollow was with me
yet, but I was in for another panic shudder. A fitful gleam of
pale light showed just ahead of me through the black thicket and I
rounded a familiar curve in the path to stand face to face with a
most portentous presence. A veritable ghost stood just within the
wood, seven feet tall, stretching out a rattling bone of an arm
and glowing from shapeless head to formless foot with pale
gleaming garments of bluish white.

More years ago than I like to count up there used to come to my
town an old man with a magic lantern. He would hire the audience
room in the ancient town hall for an evening, hung up a sheet,
charge ten cents admission and show to a crowd of wondering and
delighted urchins pictures wonderful, humorous and startling. He
always wound up with one for which he apologized, then showed it
with much gusto, saying that he did not believe in such things
himself, but that some people liked to see them. This was "death
on the pale horse," and boys used to band together and see one
another home through the darkness after looking at it. The
creature that pointed his fleshless arm at me from the thicket was
not that of the old time magic lantern exhibit, but it reminded me
of that immediately, probably because it struck the same formless
shudder through my bones. Yet it was only for a moment. I had seen
such phosphorescent ghosts before and I had but to step boldly
forward and give the stub a kick to send the spectre flying in
fragments that dropped like huge glowworms in chunks to the sodden
ground. Often in a northeast rain after long drought a rotten
birch stump will thus glow with phosphorescent fire producing a
most formidable and tradition-satisfying ghost.

There is nothing to be feared in a phosphorescent birch stub, even
with the drip of rain from the leaves making stealthy, ghostly
footfalls all through the wood and the voice of the east wind in
the trees overhead beginning to take up a querulous, wordless
complaint that moved back and forth with the footfalls. Foxfire is
a common enough phenomenon. It is easy to explain it all as I do
now. The strange part of such things is always that, at the time,
no matter what a man's training and experience, he feels creeping
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