"I can't say but it did; but of course, one must have wonderfully strong evidence before one could believe such a thing as that." "Granted; but unless you had seen the thing yourself, you cannot have stronger evidence of a phenomenon of that description, than that it was believed by those who had good reason to know the grounds of their belief. They were able to judge how far Mr. Brown was worthy of credit; and they had the advantage of having witnessed his demeanour at the public meeting, when he asserted that he had walked and talked with Robertson, at a time he could not possibly know if he was telling a lie, that the man would not sooner or later return to confute him. Besides, as far as we see, it would have been a useless and wicked lie, inasmuch as it was calculated to make the man's family very uneasy. His subsequent conduct does not at all countenance the persuasion that he was capable of such a proceeding.' "Certainly not; but you know the Scotch are very superstitious." "I can't agree with you; the higher and lower classes of the towns are exactly similar in that respect to the same classes of England. In all countries the lower classes are more disposed to put faith in these things, because they believe in their traditions and adhere to the axiom that seeing is believing. The higher classes, on the other hand, are carefully educated not to believe in such traditions and to reject the axiom that seeing is believing, if the thing seen is a ghost. Now I freely admit, that our senses often deceive us, and that we think we see what we do not; every body with the slightest intelligence has, I suppose, learnt to distrust his own senses to a certain extent; but why on one particular point we should reject their evidence altogether, I never could understand." "You have heard, I suppose of spectral illusions?" said the Doctor. "Of course I have, and admit their existence; but we have so many cases on our side, that doctrine will not cover, and it is so impossible for you to prove that any particular case of ghost seeing falls under that head, that it is no use discussing the subject. It complicates the difficulty I confess, but can never decide the question. I was going to say, however, that the shopkeepers and middle classes of Scotland are anything but what you mean by superstitious--the class to whom Brown and Robertson belong, is the most hardheaded, argumentative, and matter of fact in the kingdom; and their religion, which is eminently unimaginative, so far from inducing a belief in ghosts, would have a precisely opposite tendency, because ghosts do not form an article of belief in either the longer or shorter catechism. In the remoter districts of the Highlands, the people are said to have more of what you would call superstition; but the same peculiarity is remarked in all mountainous regions; and as it has never been satisfactorily accounted for, we will not enter into the discussion now." ROUND THE FIRE. SECOND EVENING.