He next came to the old well-known meeting-house, embosomed in large elms of aboriginal growth. He saw it as in former days, with its long range of stalls for the horses of the congregation, and its square horse-blocks at the gate with steps ascending on all their four sides, to which the country beaux gallantly led up the steeds of the country belles. Just beyond the meeting-house, he looked in vain for a well-known little brook, distinguished of old as "Blue Woman's Run," and which had formerly crossed the road, murmuring over its bed of pebbles. It had derived this cognomen from the singular apparition of a woman in a blue gown, with a pail of water on her head, which had on several Sundays boldly appeared even in the brightness of the noon-day sun, and was seen walking fearlessly among the "meeting folks," and their horses, as they stopped to let them drink at the brook; coming no one knew from whence, and going no one knew where; but appearing and disappearing in the midst of them. But the streamlet was no longer there, diverted perhaps to some other channel, and the hollow of its bed was filled up and made level with the road. About two miles further, our hero looked out for a waste field at some distance from the road, and distinguished by an antique persimmon tree of unusual size. This field he had always known of a wild and desolate aspect, bristled with the tall stalks of the mullein. Here, according to tradition, had once lived a family of free negroes, probably runaways from the south. They had lost their children by an epidemic, buried them at the foot of the persimmon tree, and soon after quitted the neighbourhood. All vestiges of their hut had vanished long before Edward Lindsay had known the place, but the graves of the children might have been traced under the grass and weeds. The deserted field had the reputation of being haunted, because whoever had the temerity to cross it, even in broad daylight, never failed, that is if they had faith, to see the faces of two little black boys looking out from behind the tree, and laughing merrily. But on approaching the tree no black boys were there. There is considerable variety in American ghosts. In Europe these phantoms are nearly all of the same stamp: either tall white females that glide by moonlight among the ruined cloisters of old abbeys; or pale knights, in dark armour, that wander, at midnight, about the turrets and corridors of feudal castles. In our country, apparitions go as little by rule as their living prototypes; and are certainly very prosaic both in looks and ways. The old persimmon tree was still there; but the field had been cultivated, and was now in red clover, and Lindsay knew that mind had marched over it.