Page:Cuthbert Bede - The White Wife.djvu/35

16 Day. This was the story that was well known and credited: and the poor girl's spectre went by the name of "The White Wife."

How can I disbelieve it—I, who myself was a witness to it? I am an old man now, and have passed the threescore and ten years that are allotted to man, and 1 was but a boy of eleven when the White Wife appeared to me; yet, if I were to live for centuries, I should never be able to chase the memory of that apparition from my mind, or to disbelieve the actuality of its presence before me on the morning of that New Year's Day. Young as I was at the time of its appearance to me, yet, even then, I reflected very seriously upon the event. Had I seen a spirit? Why did the White Wife appear to me? Could I have been deceived; and was it an ocular deception like the mirage in the dreary desert? Was it the effect of a heated imagination? But no, this could not have been the case, for there had been nothing to excite me, and a ghostly apparition was the last thing in my thoughts. Did it appear to me in order to teach me something, and with some purpose in view? Perhaps so; for, years after this,