This salt, I must explain to the uninitiated, according to a vulgar superstition in Ireland, is absolutely necessary to be drunk by those who have seen a phantom before seeing a light, as a neglect of the precaution was sure to be followed by an evil influence. As soon, therefore, as a tin measure was brought to the agitated Tom, (not filled, indeed, with salt and water, but, I am sorry to say, a much more objectionable liquid) Crawley drank it off with as much avidity as if his future salvation depended on it: the men, meanwhile, nearly convulsed with laughter at Tom’s credulity. At length, something like silence being restored, Crawley took a seat, at the same time making many wry faces (that were sufficiently accounted for by the potion he had swallowed.) He then told us, in a very solemn manner, that he had distinctly seen the semblance of a Caçadore in Colonel Eldar’s regiment, the 3rd Caçadores, who used to sell our men rum on the retreat from Almeida, and who was afterwards killed at the battle of Busaco. “But did you not speak to it?” inquired Jack Murphy. “You know I can’t talk Portuguese,” replied Crawley. “A ghost can talk any language; he would have spoken English to you if you had talked to him,” observed another. “But I was in too great a fright to talk at all to him till he vanished away among the trees.” Poor Tom Crawley! His ghost story afforded us ample amusement for many weeks afterwards, although I remember it caused his grog to be stopped, for having woke the Captain of our company in an adjoining room by the noise he had occasioned by his spiritual narration.