s. But if

The sable score, of fingers four,
Remained on the board impressed

by the spectre, then there was no telepathic hallucination, but an
actual being of an awful kind was in Smailholm Tower. Again, the
cases in which dogs and horses, as Paracelsus avers, display terror
when men and women behold a phantasm, are not easily accounted for
by telepathy, especially when the beast is alarmed _before_ the man
or woman suspects the presence of anything unusual. There is, of
course, the notion that the horse shies, or the dog turns craven, in
sympathy with its master's exhibition of fear. Owners of dogs and
horses may counterfeit horror and see whether their favourites do
sympathise. Cats don't. In one of three cases known to us where a
cat showed consciousness of a spectral presence, the apparition
_took the form of a cat_. The evidence is only that of Richard
Bovet, in his Pandemonium; or, the Devil's Cloyster (1684). In Mr.
J. G. Wood's Man and Beast, a lady tells a story of being alone, in
firelight, playing with a favourite cat, Lady Catherine. Suddenly
puss bristled all over, her back rose in an arch, and the lady,
looking up, saw a hideously malignant female watching her. Lady
Catherine now rushed wildly round the room, leaped at the upper
panels of the door, and seemed to have gone mad. This new terror
recalled the lady to herself. She shrieked, and the phantasm
vanished. She saw it on a later day. In a third case, a cat merely
kept a watchful eye on the ghost, and adopted a dignified attitude
of calm expectancy. If beasts can be telepathically affected, then
beasts have more of a 'psychical' element in their composition than
they usually receive credit for; whereas if a ghost is actually in
view, there is no reason why beasts should not see it.

The best and most valid proof that an abnormal being is actually
present was that devised by the ghost of Sir Richard of Coldinghame
in the ballad, and by the Beresford ghost, who threw a heavy curtain
over the bed-pole. Unluckily, Sir Richard is a poetical figment,
and the Beresford ghost is a myth, like William Tell: he may be
traced back through various mediaeval authorities almost to the date
of the Norman Conquest. We have examined the story in a little book
of folklore, Etudes Traditionistes. Always there is a compact to
appear, always the ghost burns or injures the hand or wrist of the
spectator. A version occurs in William of Malmesbury.