undisturbed possession of his unique apartment, and, when restored to his senses, would have been the very last to initiate a revelation. It would have been a confession fraught with serious consequences,—in the first place with regard to his situation under the college,—and it would not have contributed largely to his domestic felicity. To peach on me would have been to implicate himself, and, as drunkenness is morally a worse crime than the smoking of a cigar, he would have been the first to have suffered decapitation. It was my self-possession alone that turned one of the most reliable ghost incidents into a tale of beastly absurdity. If I was so near seeing a ghost’s legs on that night, which turned out to be no ghost’s legs at all, why might there not be some chance of my visitor on the brow of the hill to-night turning out to be some vagrant more wildly drunk than the drunken college-phantom? XII. TESTS. I again left the house, having tarried there not over ten minutes, resolved to revisit the locality where the puzzle had presented itself. After calling the dogs,—for I wished them to be with me to make the test complete, and also to observe their conduct,—I searched in every likely place to find out if my friend had not returned; for I still had a vague suspicion running in my head, that after all he might possibly have succeeded in some unaccountable way, in enveloping me in the maze of a ghostly manifestation. But I searched for him in vain; and, to settle all doubt relative to his agency in the affair, I will state that he did not return home that night until ten o’clock or after, driving by the road leading through Jamaica Plain. I then went down the garden road, and stood upon the very spot I had previously occupied. As I said before, I wished to see how the dogs would act should the figure make its appearance; and even before I reached my former position I was struck by the reluctant manner in which they followed me,—but I managed to get them on, and so there we three were; but where was that eccentric fourth?