Belief in the Supernatural. 99 



falls or stumbles, as if checked by an invisible force 

 in the midst of his career. This, too, is a living 

 superstition, and some persons will recount a whole 

 string of accidents that have happened within a few 

 yards ; till at last, such is the force of iteration, the 

 most incredulous admit it to be a series of remarkable 

 coincidences. These last two, the black dog and the 

 dangerous place in the road, are believed in by people 

 of a much higher grade than carters. Altogether, 

 the vitality of superstition in the country is very much 

 greater than is commonly suspected. It is now con- 

 fined, as it were, to the inner life of the people : no 

 one talks of such things openly, but only to their 

 friends, and thus a stranger might remark on the 

 total extinction of the belief in the supernatural. But 

 much really remains. 



The carters have a story about horses which had 

 spent the night in a meadow being found the next 

 morning in a state of exhaustion, as if they had been 

 ridden furiously during the hours of darkness. They 

 were totally unfit for work next day. Instances are 

 even given where men have hidden in a tree with a 

 gun, and when the horses began to gallop fired at 

 something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which 

 something at once disappeared, and the excitement 

 ceased. But these things are said to have happened 

 a long time ago. 



So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone 

 in a quarry and distinctly hearing the strokes of a 

 pick beneath him. When he wheeled his barrow the 

 subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after 

 he had shot the stones out there came a rumbling 

 from below as if the other barrow had been emptied. 



