THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. lo7 



and a suck at the cider-cask afterwards, hereupon 

 retked in consternation. 



" Them be after the blight, sir." And, sure enough, 

 they were in good earnest. I at once had the crawls of 

 sundry rookhngs (of which a tart was being made for 

 the kitchen) cut open, and found therein a thick debris 

 of the comminuted, half-digested pest, a few of their 

 shiny brown armour-plates being yet unsmashed, which 

 I exhibited in exaggerated stature, by help of the 

 microscope, to our horrified cook. 



Bless her heart ! she is a good, clean, simple-minded 

 thing. But the mention of her name reminds me. 

 She of late has heard a ghost ! In the stillness of the 

 night, a li nocking at the door! Too frightened to 

 move, she has simply ducked under the blankets, in- 

 stead of advancing, as we consider she should have 

 done, to interrogate. Well, of course, this is no joke 

 in a country-house. A place soon has the reputation 

 of being haunted ; and then there's no getting ser- 

 vants at all. Well, it so happened that, one night, 

 ourself had got deeply interested in a hideous novel 

 — one of the " Fine Young English Gentleman " 

 sort, which are as keenly rapid in their attractive- 

 ness (" sensation effect," it is termed) as a red- 

 herring drag, but which no one ever looks at a 

 second time, for the pleasure of restudying a pet pas- 

 sage of eloquent and truthful worth (as one does with 

 the Waverley lot), and which are only so much " rot," 

 to use an expressive vulgar term, when the literary 

 merits of England come to be registered — when, about 

 the witching hour of midnight, we heard a mysterious 

 " Tap, tap ! rap ! tap, tap 1 " It made our blood run 

 cold, we confess ; but we were brave enough to explore , 



