Finding the lady's coffin-lid loose, he proceeded to raise it that he might take a look at the redoubted Madam. Immediately she opened her eyes, sat up and rose to her feet. The carpenter, who was an elderly man, frightened out of his wits, ran from the church, which was filled with light from the risen lady. As the man darted down the churchyard avenue, he turned his head back, and over his shoulder saw her gleaming in the porch and preparing to sail down the path after him. He lived in the Dower House—or rather in part of it, at Lew Mill, and the road passes nearly all the way through woods. He ran as he had never run before, and as he ran, so he told me, his shadow went before him, cast by the light that shone from the spectral lady that followed him. On reaching his house, he burst the door open and dashed into the bed beside his wife, who was infirm and bedridden. Both of them saw the figure standing in the doorway, and the light from it was so intense that, to use the old woman's words, she could have seen a pin lying on the floor.
We gave a ball on the occasion of my second daughter, Margaret's coming out. When callers came after the ball, several of them asked who was that strange lady in a dark dress with lace, and grey hair, whom they had seen, who spoke to no one, and was addressed by no one. One gentleman said that he saw her standing under the portrait of Margaret Belfield, and he was struck with the resemblance, though the strange lady was older. The likeness was so great that he thought the lady must be a relation.
There was no old lady at the ball.
A friend of mine, R. Twigge, was staying with me, and one evening he came down dressed for dinner, and opened the side door into the drawing-room, when he was surprised to see in the arm-chair with his back to him an old gentleman with either a white wig or with powdered hair, and opposite him an elderly lady in satin. He drew back surprised, and went round through the dining-room, and asked who those persons were in the drawing-room. I went at once in through the door into the hall, and found that the room was empty. The two figures were seen occupying the seats on opposite sides of the fire-place where once sat Parson Elford and Old Madam Gould on Saturday and Sunday evenings.
My own impression is that there has been a transfer of the
