that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening
to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was
afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he
would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an
opportunity. The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. She went
about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously
and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made
many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I
know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this
preposterous state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it
is familiarly known to every intelligent man who has had fair
medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well
established and as common a state of mind as any with which
observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements,
above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly
looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind.

To return to our party. The first thing we did when we were all
assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every
bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely
examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household
duties, as if we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or
a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the
floating rumors concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.:
with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our
occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female
gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table;
and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to
catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had
communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying