ibe, I met
the good being to whom I owed so much. I ran to meet him, and felt as if
I could throw myself at his feet, and kiss the very ground before him. I
knew by his heavenly countenance he was come to speak comfort and healing
to my heart.

With humbleness and gratitude, I drank in his sage and holy discourse. I
need not follow the gracious and delightful exposition of God's revealed
will and character with which he cheered and confirmed my faltering
spirit. A solemn joy, a peace and trust, streamed on my heart. The wreck
and desolation there, lost their bleak and ghastly character, like ruins
illuminated by the mellow beams of a solemn summer sunset.

In this conversation, I told him what I had never revealed to any one
before--the absolute terror, in all its stupendous and maddening
amplitude, with which I regarded our ill-omened lodger, and my agonised
anxiety to rid my house of him. My companion answered me--

"I know the person of whom you speak--he designs no good for you or any
other. He, too, knows me, and I have intimated to him that he must now
leave you, and visit you no more. Be firm and bold, trusting in God,
through his Son, like a good soldier, and you will win the victory from a
greater and even worse than he--the _unseen_ enemy of mankind. You need
not see or speak with your evil tenant any more. Call to him from your
hall, in the name of the Most Holy, to leave you bodily, with all that
appertains to him, this evening. He knows that he must go, and will obey
you. But leave the house as soon as may be yourself; you will scarce have
peace in it. Your own remembrances will trouble you and _other minds have
established associations within its walls and chambers too_."

These words sounded mysteriously in my ears.

Let me say here, before I bring my reminiscences to a close, a word or
two about the house in which these detested scenes occurred, and which I
did not long continue to inhabit. What I afterwards learned of it, seemed
to supply in part a dim explanation of these words.

In a country village there is no difficulty in accounting for the
tenacity with which the sinister character of a haunted tenement cleaves
to it. Thin neighbourhoods are favourable to scandal; and in such
localities the reputation of a house, like that of a woman, once blown
upon, never quite recovers. In huge London, however, it is quite another
matter; and, therefore, it was with some surprise that, five years after
I