felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the
driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprang out of
the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the
ghost saw this he would have turned and fled, but the young nobleman gave
him such a blow on the head with his fist that he fell upon the ground
with a loud wailing. _Summa_: the young lord, having called back his
driver, dragged the ghost into the town again, where he turned out to be a
shoemaker called Schwelm.

I also, on seeing such a great crowd, ran thither with many others to
look at the fellow. He trembled like an aspen leaf; and when he was
roughly told to make a clean breast, whereby he might peradventure save
his own life, if it appeared that he had murdered no one, he confessed
that he had got his wife to make him a gallows' dress, which he had
put on, and had sat on the wheel before the dead man, when, from the
darkness and the distance, no one could see that the two were sitting
there together; and this he did more especially when he knew that a
cart was going from the town to Wolgast. When the cart came by, and he
jumped down and ran after it, all the people were so affrighted that
they no longer kept their eyes upon the gallows, but only on him,
flogged the horses, and galloped with much noise and clatter over the
log embankment. This was heard by his fellows in Strellin and Dammbecke
(two villages which are about three-fourths on the way), who held
themselves ready to unyoke the horses and to plunder the travellers
when they came up with them. That after the dead man was buried he
could play the ghost more easily still, etc. That this was the whole
truth, and that he himself had never in his life robbed, still less
murdered, any one; wherefore he begged to be forgiven: that all the
robberies and murders which had happened had been done by his fellows
alone. Ah, thou cunning knave! But I heard afterwards that he and his