_E._ Well, that’s a good story; and it puts me in mind of one which I
heard Captain Lewis Smith tell. It happened when he was somewhere in
the Jerseys fighting the revolution, as he calls it. It seems there
was a sergeant Kitely, who, when he returned to the camp one night,
declared that he had seen a spirit. He was evidently frightened, for
his teeth chattered as if he was half dead with cold, and for a long
time he could not muster sufficient courage to tell the story. At last
he was prevailed upon to relate it, which he did as follows:
“It was a raw, blustering night,” said he, “when I had occasion to
walk down a lane, to the house of an old woman by the name of Warlock,
who washes for the regiment. It was dark, and I had some difficulty
in finding the place. At last I found it, and knocked at the door.
But there was no answer returned. I lifted the latch, but I could see
nobody in the house. The fire was out, but in a corner of the room
under the bed were two bright, fiery balls, which I knew to be the eyes
of a cat, but they seemed to be twice as large as common.
“This made me a little skittish, for I then happened to remember that
the old beldam herself is reputed a witch; and I thought to myself,
that perhaps after all, it was she, sitting there under the bed,
rolling up her fiery eyes at me, and pretending to be a cat. As I
thought this, the eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger. I then shut
the door, and prepared to run.
“Just as I was about to start, I saw a thing as white as the driven
snow and in the shape of an old woman, flying and flapping in the air,
and lifting up her arms, and seeming to threaten me in the most awful
manner. I tried to run, but my feet stuck to the ground. I should have
screamed, but my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth, and my hair rose
up so as to throw my hat off my head.
“How I contrived to pick it up I cannot say, but I heard the footsteps
of some one near, and this I believe gave me courage. I caught my hat
and ran as fast as my legs would carry me. A voice called after me, but
I felt as light as a feather, and bounded forward like a school-boy’s
ball, with a sturgeon’s nose in the centre. It seems to me that I went
two rods at every step, and so I soon reached the barrack. But if I
live to the age of Methuselah, I shall never forget the fiery eyeballs
of the cat, or how old dame Warlock leaped up and down in the heavens,
seeming to me as tall as a steeple.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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