Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/27

24 the lady comptroller of the house, going late into the chamber where the maid-servants lay, saw no less than five of these lights together. It happened a while after that, the chamber being newly plaistered, and a grate of coal fire therein kindled to hasten the drying of the plaister, that five maid-servants went to bed as they were wont, but it fell out too soon, for in the morning they were all dead, being suffocated in their sleep with the steam of the new tempered lime and coal. Mrs. Crowe, in her Nightside of Nature, tells a couple of stories which she heard from a ‘dignitary of the Church,’ born in Wales. A female relative of his started early in the morning, attended by her father’s servant. When she had reached half way, where she expected to meet the servant of the friend she was about to visit, she dismissed the man who had accompanied her so far. The fellow had not long left her before she saw a light approach her, moving about three feet above the soil. She turned her horse out of the bridle-road, along which it advanced, to allow it to pass, but to her dismay, just as it came opposite her, it halted and remained flickering before her for about half an hour, and only vanished as she heard steps of the servant’s horse, as he trotted up to meet and conduct her to her friend. On reaching the house of her friend she related what she had seen. A few days later that very servant who