The next case I narrate is also taken from Mr. Stead’s same work.  It was sent him by one of the leading townsmen of Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and runs thus:—­

“On a fine evening in April, 1859, the writer was riding with a friend on a country road.  Twilight was closing down on us, when, after a silence of some minutes, my friend suddenly exclaimed: 

“’No man knows me better than you do, J. Do you think I am a nervous, easily frightened sort of man?’

“‘Far from it,’ said I, ’among all the men I know in the wild country I have lived and worked in, I know none more fearless or of more unhesitating nerve.’

“‘Well,’ said he, ’I think I am that, too, and though I have travelled these roads all sorts of hours, summer and winter, for twenty years, I never met anything to startle me, or that I could not account for, until last Monday evening.  About this time it was.  Riding old Fan’ (a chestnut mare) ‘here on this cross-’ (a four-way cross) ’road, on my near side was a man on a grey horse, coming from this left-hand road.  I had to pull my off-rein to give myself room to pass ahead of him; he was coming at a right angle to me.  As I passed the head of the horse I called out “Good night.”  Hearing no reply, I turned in my saddle to the off-side, to see whether he appeared to be asleep as he rode, but to my surprise I saw neither man nor horse.  So sure was I that I had seen such, that I wheeled old Fan round, and rode back to the middle of the cross, and on neither of the four roads could I see a man or horse, though there was light enough to see two hundred or three hundred yards, as we can now.  Well, I then rode over that gate’ (a gate at one corner opening into a grass field), ’thinking he might have gone that way; looking down by each hedge, I could see nothing of my man and horse; and then—­and not until then—­I felt myself thrill and start with a shuddering sense that I had seen something uncanny, and, Jove!  I put the mare down this hill we are on now at her very best pace.  But the strangest part of my story is to come,’ said he, continuing.

“’After I had done my business at the farmhouse here, at foot of this hill, I told the old farmer and his wife what I had seen, as I have now told you.  The old man said: 

“’"For many years I have known thee, M——­, on this road, and have you never seen the like before on that cross?”

“’"Seen what before?” I said.

“’"Why, a man in light-coloured clothes on a grey horse,” said he.

“’"No, never,” said I, “but I swear I have this evening.”

“’The farmer asked, “Had I never heard of what happened to the Miller of L——­ Mills about forty years ago?”

“’"No, never a word,” I told him.