“ ‘Although I felt very uncomfortable, I asked her what she wanted. She replied, “I am Mrs. M——, and I wish you to write to him that was my husband, and tell him.....”
“ ‘I am not, sir,’ said Corporal Q——, ‘at liberty to mention to anybody what she told me, except to her husband. He is at the dépôt in Ireland, and I have written and told him. She made me promise not to tell any one else. After I had promised secrecy, she told me something of a matter that convinced me I was talking to a spirit, for it related to what only I and Mrs. M—— knew, and no one living could know anything whatever of the matter; and if I was now speaking my last words on earth, I say solemnly that it was Mrs. M——’s spirit that spoke to me then, and no one else. After promising that if I complied with her request, she would not trouble me or the ward again, she went from my bed toward the fireplace, and with her hands she kept feeling about the wall over the mantel-piece. After a while, she came toward me again; and while my eyes were upon her, she somehow disappeared from my sight altogether, and I was left alone.
“ ‘It was then that I felt faint-like, and a cold sweat broke out over me; but I did not faint, and after a time I got better, and gradually I went off to sleep.
“ ‘The men in the ward said, next day, that Mrs. M—— had come to speak to me about purgatory, because she had been a Roman catholic, and we had often had arguments on religion: but what she told me had no reference to such subjects, but to a matter only she and I knew of.’
“After closely cross-questioning Corporal Q——, and endeavoring without success to reason him out of his belief in the ghostly character of his visiter, I read over to him what I had written, and then, dismissing him, sent for the other patient.
“After cautioning him, as I had done the first, I proceeded to take down his statement, which was made with every appearance of good faith and sincerity:—
“ ‘I was lying awake,’ said he, ‘last Tuesday night, when I saw some one sitting on Corporal Q——’s bed. There was so little light in the ward, that I could not make out who it was, and the figure looked so strange that I got alarmed, and felt quite sick. I called out to Corporal Q—— that there was somebody sitting upon his bed, and then the figure got up; and as I did not know but it might be coming to me, I got so much alarmed, that being but weakly’ (this was the consumptive man), ‘I fell back, and I believe I fainted away. When I got round again, I saw the figure standing and apparently talking to the corporal, placing one hand against the wall and stooping down. I could not, however, hear any voice; and being still much alarmed, I put my head under the clothes for a considerable time. When I looked up again I could only see Corporal Q——, sitting up in bed alone, and he said he had seen a ghost; and I told him I had also seen it. After a time he got up and gave me a drink of water, for I was very faint. Some of the other patients being disturbed by our talking, they bade us be quiet, and after some time I got to sleep. The ward has not been disturbed since.’
“The man was then cross-questioned; but his testimony remaining quite unshaken, he was dismissed, and the hospital-sergeant was interrogated with regard to the possibility of a trick having been practised. He asserted, however, that this was impossible; and, certainly, from my own knowledge of the hospital regulations, and the habits of the patients, I should say that a practical joke of this nature was too serious a thing to have been attempted by anybody, especially as there were patients in the ward very ill at the time, and one very near his end. The punishment would have been extremely severe, and discovery almost certain, since everybody would have been adverse to the delinquent.
“The investigation that ensued was a very brief one, it being found that there was nothing more to be elicited; and the affair terminated with the supposition that the two men had been dreaming. Nevertheless, six months afterward, on being interrogated, their evidence and their conviction were as clear as at first, and they declared themselves ready at any time to repeat their statement upon oath.”
Supposing this case to be as the men believed it, there are several things worthy of observation. In the first place, the ghost is guilty of that inconsistency so offensive to Francis Grose and many others. Instead of telling her secret to her husband, she commissions the corporal to tell it him, and it is not till a year after her departure from this life that she does even that; and she is heard in the ward two or three nights before she is visible. We are therefore constrained to suppose that, like Mrs. Bretton, she could not communicate with her husband, and that, till that Tuesday night, the necessary conditions for attaining her object, as regarded the corporal, were wanting. It is also remarkable that, although the latter heard her speak distinctly, and spoke to her, the other man heard no voice, which renders it probable that she had at length been able to produce that impression upon him which a magnetizer does on his somnambule, enabling each to understand the other by a transference of thought, which was undistinguishable to the corporal from speech, as it is frequently to the somnambule. The imitating the actions of life by leaning against the wall and feeling about the mantel-piece, are very unlike what a person would have done who was endeavoring to impose on the man; and equally unlike what they would have reported, had the thing been an invention of their own.