The laugh which began to run round the company was politely smothered in compliment to the good Doctor's candor; but the fact of a universal superstition of some description or other was considered to be very prettily established. But the conversation did not end here; and one who had before borne little part in it--a man of some distinction in literary as well as political life,--was drawn out by what had occurred, to make a statement with reference to himself which exhibited another phenomenon in supernaturalist belief--_a man who not only had a superstition and acknowledged it, but could give a reason for holding it._ "Humph!" he said, "some of you have superstitions and acknowledge them without showing that you have any grounds for your belief; and the Doctor, who has also a superstition, does not seem to have been aware of it before. Now _I_ am a believer in the supernatural, and I have had cause to be so." "Indeed I and how?" asked some member of the company. "As thus," answered the believer. "And I will tell you the story as briefly as I can and still make it intelligible,--from the fact that a severe head-ache is the inevitable penalty of telling it at all. I resided in a country section of a neighboring State, some twenty years-ago; and about three miles distant, in another little hamlet of a dozen or two houses, lived the young lady to whom I was engaged to be married. My Sundays were idle ones, and as I was busy most of the week, I generally spent the afternoon of each Sunday, and sometimes the whole of the day, at the house of my expectant bride, whom I will call Gertrude for the occasion. I kept no horse, and habitually walked over to the village. I had never ridden over, let it be borne in mind, as that is a point of interest. I very seldom rode anywhere, and Gertrude had never seen me on horseback. "It happened, as I came out from my place of boarding, one fine Sunday afternoon in mid-winter, that one of the neighbors, who kept a number of fine horses, was bringing a couple of them out for exercise. They were very restive, and he complained that they stood still too much and needed to have the spirit taken out of them a little. I laughingly replied that if he would saddle one, I would do him that favor; and he threw the saddle on a very fast running-mare, and mounted me. Accordingly, and of course from what appeared a mere accident, I rode over to the place of my destination.