To this list other stories of the same class might be added.  But it is sufficient to show that such stories as these, having gained a certain degree of currency in the world, and bearing creditable names on their front, walk through society unchallenged, like bills through a bank when they bear respectable indorsations, although, it may be, the signatures are forged after all.  There is, indeed, an unwillingness very closely to examine such subjects, for the secret fund of superstition in every man’s bosom is gratified by believing them to be true, or at least induces him to abstain from challenging them as false.  And no doubt it must happen that the transpiring of incidents, in which men have actually seen, or conceived that they saw, apparitions which were invisible to others, contributes to the increase of such stories—­which do accordingly sometimes meet us in a shape of veracity difficult to question.

The following story was narrated to me by my friend, Mr. William Clerk, chief clerk to the Jury Court, Edinburgh, when he first learned it, now nearly thirty years ago, from a passenger in the mail-coach.  With Mr. Clerk’s consent, I gave the story at that time to poor Mat Lewis, who published it with a ghost-ballad which he adjusted on the same theme.  From the minuteness of the original detail, however, the narrative is better calculated for prose than verse; and more especially as the friend to whom it was originally communicated is one of the most accurate, intelligent, and acute persons whom I have known in the course of my life, I am willing to preserve the precise story in this place.

It was about the eventful year 1800, when the Emperor Paul laid his ill-judged embargo on British trade, that my friend Mr. William Clerk, on a journey to London, found himself in company, in the mail-coach, with a seafaring man of middle age and respectable appearance, who announced himself as master of a vessel in the Baltic trade, and a sufferer by the embargo.  In the course of the desultory conversation which takes place on such occasions the seaman observed, in compliance with a common superstition, “I wish we may have good luck on our journey—­there is a magpie.”  “And why should that be unlucky?” said my friend.  “I cannot tell you that,” replied the sailor; “but all the world agrees that one magpie bodes bad luck—­two are not so bad, but three are the devil.  I never saw three magpies but twice, and once I had near lost my vessel, and the second I fell from a horse, and was hurt.”  This conversation led Mr. Clerk to observe that he supposed he believed also in ghosts, since he credited such auguries.  “And if I do,” said the sailor, “I may have my own reasons for doing so;” and he spoke this in a deep and serious manner, implying that he felt deeply what he was saying.  On being further urged, he confessed that, if he could believe his own eyes, there was one ghost at least which he had seen repeatedly.  He then told his story as I now relate it.