THE CRANFORD GHOST 89 



the rest of the household having retired to rest long 

 before, and distinctly saw the tall figure of an elderly 

 woman walk across the kitchen. Thinking it was 

 one of the maids, they spoke to her, but she vanished 

 into thin air, and a search discovered nothing at all 

 The obvious comment here is that people returning 

 home late at night in those times very frequently 

 saw thinsfs that had no existence. The narrator's 

 father, however, used to describe how he saw a man 

 in the stable-yard, and thinking he was some un- 

 authorized visitor in the Servants' Hall, asked him 

 what he was doino; there. The man " vanished " 

 without a reply ; to which the rejoinder may well 

 be made that he might do so and yet be no ghost ; 

 the motive force being a sight of the horsewhip which 

 the Earl was carrying. 



Cranford deserves notice from the literary pilgrim 

 from the circumstance that Dr. Thomas Fuller, the 

 Fuller of the much-quoted "Worthies of England,", 

 was chaplain to George, Lord Berkeley, who presented 

 him to the rectory in 1G58. He lies buried in the 

 chancel of the church. ' 



Harlingtou Corner is the name of the spot, half a 

 mile down the road, where one of the many old 

 roadside hostelries stands by a branch road leading 

 on the rio;ht to Harlino'ton, and on the left to East 

 Bedfont, on the Exeter Road. The Corner, besides 

 leading to Harlington, was also the "junction" for 

 Uxbridge, and here the slow stages set down or took 

 up passengers for that town. The fast coaches did 

 not stop here, or were supposed not to do so. Some 

 of them, however, in defiance of time-bills, halted at 



