ilst engaged in
his antiquarian researches in Cornwall, he found among some old and
original papers the manuscript account, in Dr. Ruddell's own
hand-writing, of his encounter with the ghost in question. This he
lent Gilbert, who inserted it in his _History of Cornwall_; and
there I first saw it, as stated above. A few months ago, I
purchased some of the reprinted volumes of the _Works of Daniel De
Foe_. Among these was the _Life of Mr. Duncan Campbell_, a
fortune-teller. To my great surprise, I found inserted in the
Appendix (after verses to Mr. Duncan Campbell), without either name
of the author, reference, or introduction, under the heading, 'A
remarkable Passage of an Apparition, 1665,' no other than Dr.
Ruddell's account of meeting the ghost which had haunted the boy,
so much the same as that I had read in Gilbert, that it scarcely
seemed to differ from it in a word. The name of Mr. Bligh, the
father of the boy, was, however, omitted; and Dr. Ruddell could
only be known as the author of the account by the lad's father
calling the narrator Mr. Ruddell, in their discourse about the
youth. The account is so strangely inserted in the Appendix to the
volume, without comment or reference, that, had I not previously
known the circumstances above names by Mr. Arundell, I should have
fancied it a fiction of De Foe himself, like the story {242} of
the ghost of Mrs. Veal, prefixed to _Drelincourt on Death_.

"Aware that Mr. Arundell had no idea that Ruddell's ghost story was
to be found in any work previous to Gilbert's, I lost no time in
communicating to that gentleman what I could not but deem a very
curious discovery. He assured me there could be no mistake as to
the genuineness of the ghost document he had found, as he had
compared the manuscript with Ruddell's hand-writing in other
papers, and saw it was one and the same. Soon after, Mr. Arundell
favoured me with some further information on the subject, which I
here give, as it adds still more to the interest of the
story:--'Looking into Gilbert's _History of Cornwall_, in the
parish of South Petherwin, there is said to be in the old mansion
of Botathan five portraits of the Bligh family; one of them is the
likeness of the boy, whose intimacy with the ghost of Dorothy
Durant has been spoken of