To return to Scott; he remarks that believers in ghosts must be surprised 'to find how seldom in _any_ country an allusion hath been made to such evidence in a court of justice'. Scott himself has only 'detected one or two cases of such apparition evidence,' which he gives. Now it is certain, as we shall see, that he must have been acquainted with several other examples, which did not recur to his memory: the memory of 1831 was no longer that of better years. Again, there were instances of which he had probably never possessed any knowledge, while others have occurred since his death. We shall first consider the cases of spectral evidence (evidence that is of a dead man's ghost, not of a mere wraith) recorded by Sir Walter, and deal later with those beyond his memory or knowledge. {250} Sir Walter's first instance is from Causes Celebres, (vol. xii., La Haye, 1749, Amsterdam, 1775, p. 247). Unluckily the narrator, in this collection, is an esprit fort, and is assiduous in attempts to display his wit. We have not a plain unvarnished tale, but something more like a facetious leading article based on a trial Honore Mirabel was a labouring lad, under age, near Marseilles. His story was that, in May (year not given), about eleven at night, he was lying under an almond tree, near the farm of a lady named Gay. In the moonlight he saw a man at an upper window of a building distant five or six paces, the house belonged to a Madame Placasse. Mirabel asked the person what he was doing there; got no answer, entered, and could see nobody. Rather alarmed he went to a well, drew some water, drank, and then heard a weak voice, bidding him dig there for treasure, and asking that masses might be said for the soul of the informant. A stone then fell on a certain spot; stone- throwing is a favourite exercise with ghosts everywhere.