THE EXCHANGED CRUSADER.
WHILE looking over my last year's diary, the other evening, my eye chanced to fall upon the following entry, under the date of May 14: "The fact that I have the misfortune to inhabit my ancestral halls is certainly no reason why I should be pestered half to death by the unruly spirits of my forefathers. Not only is it unkind, but also unjust, for a spectral Crusader to come gliding into my bedchamber at all sorts of unseemly hours in the night-time. I need rest, my nerves are easily unstrung, and I cannot but feel that the first duty of a man is towards himself. Mem. — Get rid of the Crusader."
This brief extract from my private book truthfully represents, I believe, my feelings, at the time of writing, with regard to all shadowy sojourners from another world. Just now, however, I look back with sorrow, with longing, even with self-accusation and bitter reproaches, to the time when Sir William Ashcourt stalked grimly through the long, lonesome halls of my castle in Wiltonshire during the dead waste and middle of the night.
As for myself, there is little to say. I am a quiet, studious young nobleman, leaving the management of my estate to agents and confidential servants. For the past six years I have devoted my time to the collection, examination, and classification of material which I desired to incorporate in the extensive "History of Rents and Wages," four vols. 8vo, published by me only two months ago. The subject is perfectly matter-of-fact, as I am myself. There need be no hesitation in confessing it. Of course it goes without saying that I have never paid any rents or earned any wages, and it might be suspected by the laity that I was scarcely qualified to undertake so extensive a discussion in what Carlyle has inappropriately termed the "dismal science."
But I digress. It is a failing of mine, arising, no doubt, from a habit of arduous and long-continued digression. I was about to give some attention to a certain shadowy Crusader who once clanked mysteriously up and down the halls and deserted rooms of my rambling half-house, half-castle, and who made regular visits to my sleeping-apartment at the hour of half-past two in the morning,—except on Fridays, when he came at a quarter before three.
Now, I feel sure that no one will object if I treat the subject of Sir William Ashcourt, my ancestor, the Crusader, in an unconventional and straightforward manner. I know it is customary for writers upon the supernatural to approach so peculiar and serious an affair as a
