ghostly hands in lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told
it in a whisper, many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of
the oldest inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter
never heard of it, and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe
it, by any sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen
a phantom there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very
old person was. Nobody knew who had seen it, nor when, nor how. The
very rumor was spectral.

All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
enough, however, for one to read easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
far from the Gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
whose long, shadowy white hair lifted like an airy weft in the streaming
wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time, without
any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the searching
blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity of the
street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or twice,
when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past,
the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague,
mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened
gradually, but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look
fixed in one direction,--watching,--watching; and, while the howling
wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
shudder in the piercing cold.