E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) AUSTIN AND HIS FRIENDS by FREDERIC H. BALFOUR Author Of "The Expiation of Eugene," etc. London Greening & Co., Ltd. 1906 [Illustration: DAPHNIS AT THE FOUNTAIN] * * * * * Advertisement The old-fashioned ghost-story was always terrifying and ghastly; something that made people afraid to go to bed, or to look over their shoulders, or to enter a room in the dark. It dealt with apparitions in a white sheet, and clanking chains, and dreadful faces that peered out from behind the window curtains in a haunted chamber. And the more blood-curdling it was, the more keenly people enjoyed it--until they were left alone, and then they were apt to wish that they had been reading Robinson Crusoe or Alison's History of Europe instead. Now the present book embodies an attempt to write a _cheerful_ ghost-story; a story in which the ghostly element is of a friendly and pleasant character, and sheds a sense of happiness and sunshine over the entire life of the ghost-seer. Whether the author has succeeded in doing so will be for his readers to decide. It is only necessary to add that he has not introduced a single supernormal incident that has not occurred and been authenticated in the recorded experiences of persons lately or still alive. * * * * * Austin and His Friends Chapter the First