looked at the postilions. Presently I saw a number of little figures of men
with peaked caps running about the horses and making attempts to scramble
up them. I said something about what I saw, whereupon my father stopped the
carriage and put me inside with my mother. The heat of the sun on my head,
he concluded, had produced these illusions. For some time I continued to
see these dwarfs running among the pebbles of the Crau, jumping over tufts
of grass, or careering along the road by the carriage side, making faces at
me. But gradually their number decreased, and I failed finally to see any
more.

One June day in the year 1884, one of my boys, then aged eight, was picking
gooseberries in the fruit garden at home, when, standing between the
bushes, he saw a little man of his own height, with a brown peaked cap, a
red jacket, and green breeches. He had black hair and whiskers and beard.
He looked angrily at the boy and said something. The child was frightened,
ran indoors and told his elder brother and sister. They brought him to
me, and his elder brother repeated the story, but purposely varied the
description of the apparition, so as to see whether the lad held to the
same account, but the child at once corrected him, and told me his story,
which his brother informed me agreed exactly with what in his alarm, he had
first told. The little boy was looking white, and frightened. Again a case
of sun on the head.

Now for another. A lady whom I know very well indeed, and who never
deviated from the truth in her life--save when she swore at the altar to
honour and obey me--was walking one day, when a girl of thirteen, beside
a quickset hedge; her brother was on the other side. I believe they were
looking for birds' nests. All at once she saw a little man dressed entirely
in green, with jacket, breeches, and high peaked hat, seated in the hedge,
staring at her. She was paralysed with terror for a moment, then recovering