"Yes; the belief in ghosts was very strong," replied the Pastor, "and still exists. The general view was that if a man's conduct was criminal in a high degree, that within three days after he 'walked;' that is, his ghost appeared at the places he had been attached to when in life, attended by more or less supernatural attributes. This, of course, arose from our Saviour's resurrection on the third day; but as to this, I will tell you a tradition that is an exception. There was once a man who was exceptionally wicked and bad; he was a thief and a robber, never went to church, and committed all manner of crimes. When he died and was buried in the churchyard, and the people who had attended the funeral had returned to the man's house to drink the Gravol--that is the beer that was specially brewed for consumption at a funeral--lo! there was the dead and buried man sitting on the roof of the house, glaring down on all those who ventured to look up at him. The priest was sent for, and he exorcised the ghost, and ordered him to remain, until the world's end, at the bottom of a moss bog, and to keep him there had a sharp stake driven through him; but, notwithstanding, the ghost rises at night, but as he cannot, from the exorcising of the priest, assume human form, he flies about in the likeness of the bird we call the night raven until cock crow." "In English," said Hardy, "the night jar. It was the practice in England to bury suicides with a stake driven through their bodies at four cross-ways. It is possible that this arose from a desire to prevent the ghost of the dead person from troubling the living, and being at a four cross-ways, that it should not know which direction to take." "It may be so," said Pastor Lindal; "but in discussing these things we are apt, as in philology, to assume our own comparisons to be correct. We have also the traditions of spectral huntsmen, with the accompaniment of horses and hounds with red-hot glowing tongues; and, singularly enough, the tradition often occurs that their quarry was the Elle-kvinder, that is women of the elves, but who are described as of the size of ordinary women. The spectral huntsmen have often been seen with the Elle-kvinder tied to their saddles by their hair." "Your traditions of witches," said Hardy, "appear to be similar to ours. You appear to have burnt and thrown them into ponds to drown after the same cruel custom as in England."