One morning, early in November, 18—, the inhabitants of the goodly village of Germantown were thrown into great consternation and dismay, by the important intelligence that a ghost had been seen the previous evening, perched upon Chew’s wall, dressed in white, and rattling a heavy chain, which some maintained he had been hung in, in consequence of some great crime. Some said that it was only a log-chain, which he intended to use, after his own fashion, on the first man he got in his clutches, while others, with a great show of reason, maintained that the chain was fastened around _his own ankle_, and that he was no less a _personage_ than the ghost of the dead soldier who had deserted from the British during the revolution, and was accidentally shot during the battle of Germantown, while a prisoner in a baggage-wagon, _as had been said_, but who, it was very likely, had been murdered during the heat of the fray, by some enemy in his own ranks—a rival in love, perhaps, or an heir to some estate, who wished him out of the way. Be all this as it may, the ghost had been _seen_ upon the wall, and he had a chain about him in some way, and some unheard of atrocity might confidently be looked for. The greatest mystery of the affair was that as soon as the rumor got on the wind, the man who had seen him was no where to be found, nor could any body tell who he was. Somebody _had_ seen him, however, and that was enough, and any inhabitant of Germantown would as soon have doubted the existence of sour-krout—a belief of which substantial proof was given daily—as to have felt the least incredulity in regard to the ghost. Of course all the inhabitants put on the gravest looks possible, and kept a sharp look-out, but still nearly a week passed and no tidings of a renewal of the visit of his ghostship occurred. Sunday morning came, and the matter was duly canvassed before the church door, prior to the arrival of the minister. A great many solemn shakes of the head and knowing winks were given on the subject. It was formally resolved that fires had better be kept burning in all the ovens for a fortnight, though it was pretty generally agreed that the ghost had been taken unawares, and that, whatever his business to that place might be, by keeping off the wall for a week, it was a pretty good sign that he did not want to show himself, and therefore he would be more cautious in future. The ghost, notwithstanding all these sage conclusions, resolved to have his own way in the matter, and accordingly made his appearance _that very evening_—not in white, nor in the form of a man, but in _black_, and running on all fours, like a hyena, on the top of the wall, and even proceeded so far as to throttle a very inoffensive person, and one who never could have had any thing to do with the murder—if indeed the apparition was the ghost of the murdered soldier. The facts of this encounter are these.