Down the glade and along the swamp edge I passed with the night falling fast. Twilight lingers long in our latitude and the gray sky still lighted the path dimly, though the woods were black on either side. The tranquillity of the home-like hollow was with me yet, but I was in for another panic shudder. A fitful gleam of pale light showed just ahead of me through the black thicket and I rounded a familiar curve in the path to stand face to face with a most portentous presence. A veritable ghost stood just within the wood, seven feet tall, stretching out a rattling bone of an arm and glowing from shapeless head to formless foot with pale gleaming garments of bluish white. More years ago than I like to count up there used to come to my town an old man with a magic lantern. He would hire the audience room in the ancient town hall for an evening, hung up a sheet, charge ten cents admission and show to a crowd of wondering and delighted urchins pictures wonderful, humorous and startling. He always wound up with one for which he apologized, then showed it with much gusto, saying that he did not believe in such things himself, but that some people liked to see them. This was "death on the pale horse," and boys used to band together and see one another home through the darkness after looking at it. The creature that pointed his fleshless arm at me from the thicket was not that of the old time magic lantern exhibit, but it reminded me of that immediately, probably because it struck the same formless shudder through my bones. Yet it was only for a moment. I had seen such phosphorescent ghosts before and I had but to step boldly forward and give the stub a kick to send the spectre flying in fragments that dropped like huge glowworms in chunks to the sodden ground. Often in a northeast rain after long drought a rotten birch stump will thus glow with phosphorescent fire producing a most formidable and tradition-satisfying ghost.