but it is at
all events good testimony that horses as well as men have spirits, for
one of the ghosts the General saw was, undoubtedly, that of the pony
murdered by B. Why it was still ridden by the phantom of its former
master is another question.

The next case I narrate is also taken from Mr. Stead's same work. It was
sent him by one of the leading townsmen of Cowes, in the Isle of Wight,
and runs thus:--

"On a fine evening in April, 1859, the writer was riding with a friend
on a country road. Twilight was closing down on us, when, after a
silence of some minutes, my friend suddenly exclaimed:

"'No man knows me better than you do, J. Do you think I am a nervous,
easily frightened sort of man?'

"'Far from it,' said I, 'among all the men I know in the wild country I
have lived and worked in, I know none more fearless or of more
unhesitating nerve.'

"'Well,' said he, 'I think I am that, too, and though I have travelled
these roads all sorts of hours, summer and winter, for twenty years, I
never met anything to startle me, or that I could not account for, until
last Monday evening. About this time it was. Riding old Fan' (a chestnut
mare) 'here on this cross-' (a four-way cross) 'road, on my near side
was a man on a grey horse, coming from this left-hand road. I had to
pull my off-rein to give myself room to pass ahead of him; he was coming
at a right angle to me. As I passed the head of the horse I called out
"Good night." Hearing no reply, I turned in my saddle to the off-side,
to see whether he appeared to be asleep as he rode, but to my surprise I
saw neither man nor horse. So sure was I that I had seen such, that I
wheeled old Fan round, and rode back to the middle of the cross, and on
neither of the four roads could I see a man or horse, though there was
light enough to see two hundred or three hundred yards, as we can now.
Well, I then rode over that gate' (a gate at one corner opening into a
grass field), 'thinking he might have gone that way; looking down by
each hedge, I could see nothing of my man and horse; and then--and not
until then--I felt myself thrill and start with a shuddering sense that
I had seen something uncanny, and, Jove! I put the mare down this hill
we are on now at her very best pace. But the strangest part of my story
is to come,' said he, continuing.

"'After I had done my business at the farmhouse here, at foot of this
hill, I told the old farmer and his wife what I had seen, as