eyewitness. His body meanwhile lay like that of a man in a trance or
half dead. One day, however, some enemies of his took the body while in
this state and burnt it, thus, to use Pliny's phrase, leaving the soul
no sheath[97] to which it could return.

No one can help being struck by the bald and meagre character of these
stories as a whole. They possess few of the qualities we expect to find
in a good modern ghost story. None of them can equal in pathetic beauty
many of those to be found in Myers's _Human Personality_. Take, for
example, the story of the lady[98] who was waked in the night by the
sound of moaning and sobbing, as of someone in great distress of mind.
Finding nothing in her room, she went and looked out of the landing
window, "and there, on the grass, was a very beautiful young girl in a
kneeling posture before a soldier, in a General's uniform, clasping her
hands together and entreating for pardon; but, alas! he only waived her
away from him."

The story proved to be true. The youngest daughter of the old and
distinguished family to which the house had belonged had had an
illegitimate child. Her parents and relations refused to have anything
more to do with her, and she died broken-hearted. The lady who relates
the story saw the features so clearly on this occasion that she
afterwards recognized the soldier's portrait some six months later, when
calling at a friend's house, and exclaimed: "Why, look! There is the
General!" as soon as she noticed it.

One really beautiful ghost story has, however, come down to us.[99]
Phlegon of Tralles was a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian. His work is
not of great merit. The following is a favourable specimen of his
stories. A monstrous child was born in Ætolia, after the death of its