“The room, I must here state, was lighted by a single, though rather powerful, double-wick oil lamp, which I had always deemed sufficient to illuminate the whole apartment, but which now--and I could not help noticing the phenomenon--did not extend its rays beyond the cadaverous face of my intruder, upon which the full force of its light seemed concentrated. “Commencing in clear and solemn tones, the phantasm stated that it was one of the unhappy prisoners executed at Northampton on the 4th of August, 1764. “A cold chill ran down my back at this announcement, which was intensified when I recognised for the first time that the figure confronting me bore a startling likeness to one of the prisoners it had been my unhappy lot to address prior to his execution: there was the same hair, brows and beard--black and stubby; the protruding forehead and retreating chin that had so repelled me, the malshaped head and the broken, unsavoury-looking teeth; it was indeed the ghost of one of those diabolical miscreants that stood before me, and, despite the fact that I was brought up in the strict Protestant faith, I inadvertently crossed myself. “The spectre went on without apparently heeding my action. “‘It had been,’ so it proclaimed, ‘the principal and ringleader of the gang, most of whom it had corrupted, debauched and seduced to that deplorable method of life, and it was particularly appointed by Providence to undeceive the world and remove those doubts which the solemn protestations of their innocence to the very hour of death had raised in the minds of all who heard them.’ “At this juncture, excitement overcoming fear and aversion, I hazarded to inquire of the phantasm its name.