If the grown folk had not all shared Sarah’s belief in these gruesome creatures, I might perhaps have doubted they existed; but I remember to have seen them huddle closer to the fire, look warily over their shoulders at the shadows, as though they lay in wait for a casual bit of darkness to pounce upon them and carry them off to the ghostly limbo. Had Sarah but known how pain impresses the memory of a child, it is probable that she would have put me to bed rather than have taken me with her, as a witness of her folly and ignorant credulity. She believed herself to be very level-headed, and, indeed, by her acquaintances she was esteemed as a sensible and clever woman; but, as she infected me with many silly fears, I am now inclined to believe that both she and her neighbours were sadly deficient in common-sense. One effect of these interminable ghost-stories was visible one evening when I went to fetch some water from the Castle well. It appeared to me that I saw on this occasion a tall, black spectre, standing astride of the Castle well. I took it at first to be the shadow of a tree, but tracing it upward I saw a man’s head which seemed to reach the sky. I gazed at it a short time, unable to move or cry out; then the phantom seemed to be advancing upon me, fear put wings to my feet, and I turned and ran, screaming, and never once halted until I had found a safe hiding-place under my bed. The dreadful vision of that ghost haunted me for years, and for a long time I made it a rule not to retire until I had looked under the bed, lest, when asleep, ghosts and kidnappers might come and carry me off. The belief that the darkness was infested by evil agencies and ferocious visitants hostile to little boys I owe to Sarah’s silly garrulity at Castle Row. I am under the impression that during the day, for a portion of this period, I was sent to an infant’s school, where there was a terrible old lady who is associated in my mind with spectacles and a birch rod; but I have no particular incident connected with it to make it definite. Richard Price and his wife Jenny seem to have, at last, become dismayed at my increasing appetite, and to have demanded a higher rate for my maintenance. As both my uncles had in the mean time married, and through the influence of their wives declined to be at further charge for me, the old couple resolved to send me to the Workhouse. Consequently Dick Price, the son, took me by the hand one day, Saturday, February 20th, 1847, and, under the pretence that we were going to Aunt Mary at Fynnon Beuno, induced me to accompany him on a long journey.