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"No; you saw but one, and that was a cigar; and the man was puffing away at the time: that was it."

"I know better! Do you think I'm such a fool as not to know a real man from a ghost?"

"That was no ghost!"

"It was, I tell you. Can't I believe my own eyes?"

"It won't do, Pokey! I won't take it in! If you saw anything but a man, you saw it in imagination merely."

"As Peter the Great did," observed Obadiah, "at the time he imagined he'd welted the Dutch."

"Peter the Great!" retorted Pokey, contemptuously. "What has this got to do with Peter the Great?"

"What has it got to do with it? It's got all to do with it! mind you that! When the Dutch, in the reign of old Harry the Eighth—"

"Blister the Dutch, and Harry the Eighth, too! What do you think we want to know about the Dutch? I tell you again that I see a ghost! It was all in white, from head to heel; and what's more, it had an umbrella."

"An umbrella!" cried Legge.

"I say an umbrella! And what's more, he had it up, as if it rained pouring."

"Well!" said Legge. "I have heard of many things, but I never before heard of a ghost with an umbrella!"

Whereupon a loud roar of laughter burst from all but Pokey, whom their utter incredulity rendered indignant.

"I don't care a button about your laughing," said he; "I know what I know; and I'll bet you half a gallon it was a ghost, and nothing but!"

"Who's to prove it?"

"If you can't believe me, come and see it yourself! Now, then!"

"We should be great fools to do that!" said Obadiah; "as big fools as the French was at the battle of Bunker's Hill, when Charley the Second—"

"I don't care about what they was at Bunker's Hill; I only know this: you daren't come and see."

"Daren't!" echoed Obadiah, valiantly; "daren't!"

"Aye, daren't! I'll bet you half a gallon you daren't!"

"Do you know what Cæsar said when Pompey told him he daren't? 'Pompey,' said he—"

"Pompey be smothered. What's Pompey to do with it? I tell you I'll make you this bet, if you like, and I'll put the money down."

"Do you think that, for the sake of half a gallon of beer, I'll allow you, or any other man in the universe, to place me in the juxtaposition of being laughed at? Not exactly. My ideas don't fructify in that way, and so you needn't think of having the laugh against me."

"I don't want to have the laugh against you."

"But it would be against me, if I were to go out on such a fool's errand as that. It won't do, Pokey: it won't do, my boy. You're a very clever man at your needle, no doubt, but you mustn't at all expect to get over me."