Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/337

Legge, who was endeavouring to bring his wife round, could not then attend to that call: nor was it until that lady had recovered that the brandy-bottle made its appearance.

During the whole of this time not a single observation, having reference to the ghost, was made. They were thoughtful, but silent, and looked at each other with expressions of amazement and alarm; but when each had had a glass of Legge's brandy, they began to discuss the subject openly, yet cautiously, until indeed each had had a second glass, when Obadiah boldly declared that he didn't believe it was any ghost at all.

"What!" exclaimed Pokey, on hearing this monstrous declaration. "Do you mean to tell me, after what we've heard and seen, that it could by possibility be anything but a ghost?"

"Yes, I do! Look at the nature of ghosts in general. What are they? Spirits—that's what they're made of. Now fructify your ideas a little: just look you here:—Do you think that if that had been a ghost, and it had wanted to come in here, it wouldn't have come in?"

"How could it?"

"How could it!"

"Aye, when the door was locked?"

"What's the odds about the door being locked. Couldn't it have come through the keyhole?"

"What, a ghost of that size!"

"What's the size to do with it? Ghosts—real ghosts—can go anywhere they like, and through anything they like! It makes no odds to them what it is! Talk about a keyhole; why, they'll go through the smallest conceivable crevice! What does it matter to them? If that had been a ghost, rather than suffer himself to be done, he'd have sunk into the earth on one side of the door, and come up on the other, at once!"

"What do you mean? What, clean through the flag-stones?"

"Flag-stones! Of course! What do ghosts care about flag-stones?"

"Well, if they'll do that—"

"That! They'll do anything, those fellows will. It's no odds to them what they do."

"But do you mean to say—"

"Yes, I do! I mean to say that that was no ghost."

"I don't believe it was myself, now," interposed Legge.

"Nor do I," said Quocks.

"Nor don't I," observed Mr. Bobber.

"Well, but look here," cried Pokey, "if it wasn't, what made you all so frightened!"

"There's times," said Obadiah, assuming a profoundly philosophical expression; "when the ideas of men don't fructify as they ought: there's also times when the amalgamating juxtaposition of those ideas is not boney fidi non compas. When, therefore, the intellects is either nem con, or sine die, and the fructification of ideas in the brain is at its maximus, why, we're just like the Romans when the Greeks stormed Turkey, we don't know what to think; but when the supernatural ex-