hen, dimly
enough at first but soon with portentous rapidity, her disordered
consciousness would conceive the idea that her friend had been murdered
and that it was her duty to bring the slayer to justice. From this it
would be an easy step to the development, in the neurotic child, of a
full fledged secondary personality, akin to that found in the
spiritistic mediums of later times.

Now, for the first time, her faculties would seem to her astonished
parents to be in the keeping and under the control of an extraneous
being, a departed, discarnate spirit; and in this error she and they
would be confirmed by the suggestions and foolish questions of those who
came to marvel. It needed another great shock--there being in those days
no Janet or Prince or Sidis to take charge of the case--the shock of
the arrest and imprisonment of her parents, to effect at least partial
reintegration and the consequent disappearance of the secondary self,
the much debated, malevolent Cock Lane ghost.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] It is proper to observe that the name Knight given to the leading
actor in this singular drama rests on inference merely. Doubtless from a
fear of libel suits, the contemporary newspapers and magazines speak of
him only as Mr. ----, or Mr. K----, there being, so far as the present
writer has been able to discover, only one publication (_The Gentleman's
Magazine_) so bold as to refer to him as Mr. K----t. Nowhere is his
identity made clear. Judging from the prominence of those who rushed to
his defense, he would seem to have been a person of considerable
importance.

[I] _The Annual Register_ for 1762.

VI

THE GHOST SEEN BY LORD BROUGHAM

It is comparatively easy, when seated before a roaring fire in a
well-lighted room, to sneer ghosts out of existence, and roundly affirm
that they are without exception the fanciful products of a heated
imagination. But the matter takes on a very different complexion, when
in that same room and without so much as the opening of a door, one is
unexpectedly confronted by the figure of an absent friend, who, it
subsequently appears, is about that time breathing his last in another
part of the world. Especially would it seem impossible to remain
skeptical if there existed between oneself and the friend in question a
compact, drawn up years before in an access of youthful enthusiasm,
binding whichever should die first to appear to the other at the moment
of death.

This, as al