He was told that these miscreants had a plan to surround his house that
night and to shoot everybody in it, and at that very moment they were
confabulating at a certain farmhouse.

Refusing to be escorted or guarded, he made his way to that farm, and
walking into the kitchen, rated the lot of them in unmeasured terms.

Cowed and abashed they listened to him as he threatened the law, hell,
and the devil alone knows what beside. Finally, pistol in hand, he bade
them produce their arms and put them in his dog-cart.

This they actually did--for they had imbibed no liquor to give them
false pluck--and, with a final curse, he whipped up his horse and drove
away 'with all their teeth' to the barracks, where he left a very useful
arsenal, and was never troubled by one of them again.

To thus obtain complete immunity by sheer coolness is as much a matter
of personal magnetism as anything else. An instance of this, which
impressed me much, occurred in a coiner-ghost story told by Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, which I venture to quote.

'The hero was no less a person than Marshal Saxe. One night, on the
march, he bivouacked in a haunted castle, and slept the sleep of the
brave until midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding
the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first
discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck
it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable
spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to
a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly yawned, and they sank
together through it to sepulchral depths. Here he was surrounded by a