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Indiana University Studies 



was still isolated from the rest of the world. In that neigh- 

 borhood lingered longest the oral tradition of the old balladry, 

 and, like the ancient nation of Strathclyde, superstition found 

 its last stronghold in the mountain fastnesses of Selkirkshire, 

 ghost-haunted by the persecuted Covenanters. Hogg himself 

 was a firm believer in many of the supernatural tales he 

 wrote. It is due to this fact that they have such a convincing 

 air of truth about them ; and it was also due to this fact that 

 it never occurred to Hogg that a rational explanation was 

 needed. He told a ghost story just as he described a storm : 

 the way it happened. The highest tribute to the excellence 

 of his productions is that one cannot find it in one's heart to 

 contradict the assumption. 



One of the most characteristic of Hogg's short stories, 

 which, tho not dealing with the supernatural, illustrates his 

 method of telling either kind, is The Long Pack. 



One afternoon a peddler, carrying on his back a pack, very 

 large and very long, arrives at a farmhouse where no one is 

 at home except a maid-servant. He insists upon staying all 

 night as he is too tired to go on with his heavy pack. 

 Thoroly frightened and dismayed, the maid tries every way 

 to get rid of him, but without success. At last, however, the 

 peddler agrees to seek lodgings elsewhere if she will allow him 

 to leave the pack in the house over night. Later in the even- 

 ing the domestic thinks that she sees the pack move. In 

 terror she rouses one of the hinds who sleeps in an adjoining 

 outhouse. He makes fun of her fears and, in order to con- 

 vince her of her foolishness, discharges a musket at the pack. 

 There is a shriek of pain, and the pack doubles up and tumbles 

 on the floor. Then all is quiet. Upon examination the pack 

 is found to contain a man who has just been shot dead. Later 

 in the night an attack is made on the house by a large body 

 of armed horsemen who are driven away by several persons 

 who have been hastily summoned into the house for protec- 

 tion. In the morning it is found that some of the attacking 

 party had returned to the scene of their defeat and had re- 

 moved all outward signs of the fray. 



This story is told so vividly that the reader is kept gasping 

 to the end. So much the greater is his disappointment to 

 find that there is no end. There was never any clue in fact 

 as to who the man in the pack was — there is none in the 

 story ; there was, in fact, never any clue as to who the horse- 



