II. The Incidents 18 III. The Scene 22 IV. The Brook 25 V. The Dogs 30 VI. The Flat Bridge 34 VII. Suspected 41 VIII. The Murder-Rock 45 IX. Suspicion 49 X. Was it a Ghost? 57 XI. The Tests 67 XII. Tests 75 XIII. The Doctor’s Story 94 XIV. My Plan of Punishment 101 XV. The Children 110 XVI. Ghosts 113 XVII. Manifestations 123 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. The main circumstances that form, in part, the topic of my recital, excited, at the time of their occurrence, a feeling of unprecedented horror. They came upon the public sensibility with a force that even the previous recital of the bloody events of the civil war could not lessen. Habituation to horror had not deadened the public susceptibility; for there was around the incidents a belt of mystery and affright that defied the approach of justice, and baffled private speculation. No necessity, even in the tortuous excuses of crime, was apparent for the deed; for the victims had had no opportunities to establish, individually of themselves, hostile relations with any one, and their condition placed them beyond or beneath the chance of social importance. They were claimants to no estate in litigation, stood in no man’s way to advancement, could have produced no rivalry, had inspired neither revenge, nor jealousy, nor love. They had, in fine, none of those means that men and women have to incite to crime; for they were children, and yet they were subjected to a fate that few, if any, children, had confronted before. The commission of the deed was a barbarity; its motives, apparently, a paradox.