Jack sate down with the servant maids, and talked of this strange affair, which he persisted in calling “all nonsense;” and devoured the cakes which he had determined to win. Many a time did he laugh in his sleeve as he heard this “great fright,” as it came to be called, talked over, and painted in many new colours by the fireside; but he kept his counsel strictly while he continued to live there; for he knew a terrible castigation would be the sure consequence of a disclosure; but after he quitted the place, he made a full and merry confession to his new comrades, and occasioned one long laughter to run all the country round. The people of the Fall, backed by the Wood-endians, persisted that the noises were something supernatural, and that this was an after-invention of Jack’s to disgrace them; but Jack and the public continued to have the laugh on their side. After all, I know not whether the world of sprites and hobgoblins may not assume a greater latitude of action and revelation in these out-of-the-world places than in populous ones; whether the Lars and Lemures, the Fairies, Robin-goodfellows, Hobthrushes and Barguests, may not linger about the regions where there is a certain quietness, a simplicity of heart and faith, and ample old rooms, attics, galleries and grim halls to range over, seeing that they hate cities, and knowledge, and the conceit that attends upon them; for certainly, I myself have seen such sights and heard such sounds as would puzzle Dr. Brewster himself, with all his natural magic, to account for. In an old house in which my father lived when I was a boy, we had such a capering of the chairs, or what seemed such in the rooms over our heads; such aerial music in a certain chimney corner, as if Puck himself were playing on the bagpipes; such running of black cats up the bed-curtains and down again, and disappearing no one knew how; and such a variety of similar supernatural exhibitions, as was truly amusing. And a friend of mine, having suffered a joiner to lay a quantity of elm boards in a little room near a kitchen chimney to dry, was so annoyed by their tumbling and jumbling about, that when the man came the next day to fetch part of them, he desired him to take the whole, giving him the reason for it. “O!” said the man, “you need not be alarmed at that--that is always the way before a coffin is wanted!” As if the ghost of the deceased came and selected the boards for the coffin of its old world-mate the body. But enough of the terrors of solitary houses without those of superstition. I close my chapter; and yet I expect, dear readers, that in every place where you peruse this, you will say, “O, these are nothing to what I could have told. If Mr. Howitt had but heard so and so.” Thank you, my kind and fair friends in a thousand places--I wish I had. CHAPTER VI. MIDSUMMER IN THE FIELDS.