“At first I could not see any inkling of a horse, but I heerd the branches swishing along his sides, at the lower end of the glen. Then I saw a large dark object as big as a haystack coming nixt me, and walking straight through trees and bushes as if they were mere shadows.
“I juked down behind a hedge of broom, and as I hunkered in the shadow he came on in the slightly dusk light. The horse was as big as four horses, and at a distance I thought the rider was a huge blackavised man; but when he came fornenst me the moon fell full upon him through a break in the trees, and then I saw that he was crulged up on the saddle, and that only a red and ghastly stump stuck up between his shoulders, where his head should have been.
”I escaped unseen, but just as the terrible thing passed me it nichered again horribly, and I saw sparks of fire darting out of its mouth.
“It then turned and cut triangle across the valley, passing over the cockpit, and walking upon the air, as it emerged into the moonlight. It walked up straight against the steep edge of the quarry-pit, and vanished into the bank. I saw it vanishing by degrees, like a shadow, at first black, but growing lighter and lighter, till it entirely disappeared, and there was nothing on the high bank where it stopped but the bright moonlight.”
Kaly Nesbit had the reputation of being a very good man. I knew him pretty well, especially as a near relative of his had been my kind old nurse, who imparted to me much Brontë lore. I am sure he believed the fascinating story he told; but a noggin of whiskey is a rather indefinite quantity, and Kaly Nesbit, on that night, may have had his faculties for hearing and seeing in a rather sensitive condition.
However that may have been, his sober and earnest account of the monstrous spectre, confirming, as it did, the wildest stories of the Brontës, created a profound impression.
THE HYPNOTIC EXPERIMENTS OF DOCTOR LUYS.
By R. H. Sherard.