"Who is--or who was--the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?"

"Well!" said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he
scratched his head with the other, "they say, in general, that she
was murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while."

This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn,
except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I
see, had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the
hooded woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as "a hold
chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby,
unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, 'Why not?
and even if so, mind your own business,'" had encountered the
hooded woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not
materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was
in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed
by the landlord), Anywheres.

Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the
mysteries, between which and this state of existence is interposed
the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the
things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend
that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere
banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such-
like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading
analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand,
than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual
intercourse of my fellow- traveller to the chariot of the rising
sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses--both abroad. In
one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of