In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. Itle towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more ed with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The a map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 「Here are lions.」 Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we write but one lihat is certain, 「Here are ghosts.」
My ghosts inhabit the village of H-----, ier. History has in no manner been burdened by this a village, with its crooked lanes, its old abbey churchyard full of long grass, its green background of small fir-trees, and its quay, where lie a few tarry fishing-luggers. In the annals of entomology it is well known. For a small bay lies westward a little, where he who watches night after night may see a certain rare moth fluttering along the edge of the tide, just at the end of evening or the beginning of dawn. A hundred years ago it was carried here from Italy by smugglers in a cargo of silks and laces. If the moth-hunter would throw down his , and go hunting fhost tales or tales of the faeries and such-like children of Lillith, he would have need for far less patience.
To approach the village at night a timid man requires great strategy. A man was once heard plaining, 「By the cross of Jesus! how shall I go? If I pass by the hill of Dunboy old Captain Burney may look out on me. If I go round by the water, and up by the steps, there is the headless one and another on the quays, and a new one uhe old churchyard wall. If I ght round the other way, Mrs. Stewart is appearing at Hillside Gate, and the devil himself is in the Hospital Lane.」
I never heard which spirit he braved, but feel sure it was not the one in the Hospital Lane. In cholera times a shed had been there set up to receive patients. When the need had gone by, it ulled down, but ever sihe ground where it stood has broken out in ghosts and demons and faeries. There is a farmer at H-----, Paddy B----- by name-a man of great strength, and a teetotaller.
His wife and sister-in-law, musing on his great strength, often wonder what he would do if he drank.
One night when passing through the Hospital Lane, he saw what he supposed at first to be a tame rabbit; after a little he found that it was a white cat. When he came near, the creature slowly began to swell larger and larger, and as it grew he felt his own strength ebbing away, as though it were sucked out of him. He turned and ran.
By the Hospital Lane goes the 「Faeries Path.」 Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expeg her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said,