As usual Old Adam Olliver’s philosophy was unanswerable. They gave themselves to the Word of God and to prayer, and separated, to “wait for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning.” CHAPTER XXXI. “BALAAM” DECLARES HIMSELF A “SPIRITUALIST.” “What may this mean, That thou, dread corse, Revisitest thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous?” _Shakespeare._ Although two of the burglars engaged in the nocturnal attack on Waverdale Hall had been safely lodged in gaol, the whole region round about seemed to be infested with desperadoes, whose depredations where continually being heard of, and whose outrages, alike on travellers and dwellings, kept that portion of East Yorkshire in a state of perpetual fear. Squire Fuller had not been able to obtain tidings of the missing box, nor had the few and inefficient officers of justice been able to lay hands on any other of these dangerous disturbers of the public peace. To add to the general feeling of insecurity and alarm, the villagers of Nestleton were much exercised by reports to the effect that “Sister Agatha’s ghost,” to which my readers were introduced in the first chapter of these veracious chronicles, had latterly been seen by more than one belated villager who had passed the ruins of the old Priory at the witching hour of night. Jake Olliver, old Adam’s son and foreman on Gregory Houston’s farm, declared that he himself, on his return from certain amatory visits to Cowley Priory, had seen in the silvery moonlight the spirit of the erratic nun, arrayed in flowing robes of white, and with a broad crimson stain upon her breast. He saw her pace with outstretched arms around the ruined walls, and then at a certain crumbling archway, nearly overgrown with thorns and briars, a blue flame enveloped her, and with a wild, weird shriek, she vanished from his sight. He did not hesitate to confess that at the sight of that last phenomenon he took to his heels and ran. The burly landlord of the Green Dragon, too, had seen the awful apparition. He deposed to two uncanny tenants of the haunted pile; but as he was rather partial to the spirit of malt, it is more than likely that he had an alcoholic gift of second sight, a faculty for “seeing double.” Probably, even out of the mouth of two witnesses, the truth would hardly have been established; but their story was confirmed in its chief particulars by a pillar of the Church, no less a dignitary, indeed, than the parish clerk.