The belief that the spirits of the dead are, under certain circumstances, permitted to revisit the places which they were in the habit of frequenting, and the persons with whom they were acquainted while in the body, has too strong a hold on the human mind not to be still an article of popular faith in this island; but the doings of these disembodied spirits do not differ sensibly from what is attributed to them in other European countries. The ghost of the murdered man still haunts the spot where he was foully deprived of life, crying for vengeance on his assassin. The murderer’s form is seen at the foot of the gibbet where he expiated his crime. The shade of the suicide lingers about the spot where he committed his rash act. The spirit of the tender mother is seen bending over the cradles of her darling children, smoothing their tangled locks, washing their begrimed faces, and lamenting over the neglected state in which they are allowed to remain by a careless or unkind step-dame. The acquirer of ill-gotten wealth wanders about, vainly endeavouring to make restitution. And the ghosts of the shipwrecked mariners who have perished in the waves, roam along the fatal shore, and, with loud wailings, claim a resting place for their remains in their mother-earth. Some also say that the departing spirit occasionally takes the form of a bird, and, from a story told us, it would seem that it also sometimes puts on the form of a mouse. An elderly woman who lived alone in a house in the neighbourhood of Ste. Hélène was found one morning dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. From the evidence at the inquest it appeared that she had entrusted the latch key of the front door to a workman, who was to come early to the house next morning to do some small job in the way of plastering. It was supposed that before retiring to rest, at her usual hour between nine and ten, she had intended to go to the door to see whether the door was properly latched, and that, in descending the stairs, she had slipped, and, falling forward, had broken her neck. She had a first cousin, within a week or two of the same age as herself, with whom she had been brought up, and between whom and herself great affection had always existed. About the time that the accident must have happened, this cousin was sitting with his wife, by whom the story was related to me, warming themselves before the fire, previously to getting into bed. They were speaking of the old woman, and the husband remarked that he had not seen her for some days, and hoped she was well, and then immediately made the remark that he had seen a mouse run across the room, coming from the door towards them. His eyesight was very defective, and his wife endeavoured to persuade him that it was impossible that he could have seen anything of the kind, and that, moreover, she had never seen a mouse in that room.