from, of
what worth is human testimony? That ghosts have returned to the earth,
either for the discovery of murder, or to make restitution for other
injustice committed in the flesh, or compelled thereto by the
incantations of sorcery, or to communicate tidings from another world,
has been testified to in all ages, and many are the accounts which have
been left us both in sacred and profane authors. Did not Brutus, when in
Asia, as is related by Plutarch, see----"

Just at this moment the parson's handmaid announced that a person waited
on him in the kitchen,--or the good clergyman would probably have
detailed all those cases in history, general and biblical, with which
his reading had acquainted him, not much, we fear to the edification and
comfort of the sexton, who had to return to Lanreath, a long and dreary
road, after nightfall. So, instead, he directed the girl to take him
with her, and give him such refreshment as he needed, and in the
meanwhile he prepared a note in answer to Mr Mills, informing him that
on the morrow he was to visit some sick persons in his parish, but that
on the following evening he should be ready to proceed with him to the
moor.

On the night appointed the two clergymen left the Lanreath rectory on
horseback, and reached the moor at eleven o'clock. Bleak and dismal did
it look by day, but then there was the distant landscape dotted over
with pretty homesteads to relieve its desolation. Now, nothing was seen
but the black patch of sterile moor on which they stood, nothing heard
but the wind as it swept in gusts across the bare hill, and howled
dismally through a stunted grove of trees that grew in a glen below
them, except the occasional baying of dogs from the farmhouses in the
distance. That they felt at ease, is more than could be expected of
them; but as it would have shown a lack of faith in the protection of
Heaven, which it would have been unseemly in men of their holy calling
to exhibit, they managed to conceal from each other their uneasiness.
Leading their horses, they trod to and fro through the damp fern and
heath with firmness in their steps, and upheld each other by remarks on
the power of that Great Being whose ministers they were, and the might
of whose name they were there to make manifest. Still slowly and
dismally passed the time as they conversed, and anon stopped to look
through the darkness for the approach of their ghostly visitor. In vain.
Though the night was as