AN AMERICAN'S ADVENTURES. 281 



eating its poor young I — eating with a gusto and drinking 

 the warm blood greedily. I drew back and pushed a 

 large stone against the entrance, and lighting my bag, 

 which was, of course, hemp, and burned readily, I tossed 

 it into the bed of dried ferns and leaves behind my im- 

 provised prison-bar. The dry stuff caught instantly, and 

 the smoke and flame poured out of the cracks, while the 

 unnatural father made frantic efforts to escape from the 

 fiery furnace to which I had, without recourse, condemned 

 him, and in which I had the satisfaction to see his bad 

 deeds punished. 



•^ When the unhappy mother returned, she v/andered 

 inconsolably over the country for a week and then dis- 

 appeared. Soon after, I was in a neighboring town visit- 

 ing a clergyman whose parsonage overlooked the parish 

 burying-ground. He told me — with real apprehension, 

 too — that ghosts had recently disturbed his household's 

 quiet, and that it was all he could do to keep his super- 

 stitious servant from leaving him alone upon his haunted 

 hearth. I interrogated Gertrude, and found that upon a 

 tomb erected to one who had died without the sacrament, 

 ' like a dog,' on two successive nights she had seen a 

 ghost, nodding and prostrating himself in real ghostly 

 fashion. I don't believe much myself in that kind of 

 nonsense ; and I resolved to watch with servant and 

 master the next night, when, sure enough, the perform- 

 ance was repeated ; but to my sceptical eyes, even at the 

 distance of our window from the grave-yard, by a very 



