Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/735

Rh (I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)

"Barber! Pursue me!"

I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in blaster B.'s room no longer. Most people know what long and fatiguing night-journeys had been forced upon the witches who' used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact truth—particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions, and the torture was always ready. I asseverate that, during my occupation of Master B.'s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was presented to no old man with a goat's horns and tail (something between Pan and an old-clothes-man), holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and less decent; but I came upon other things which appeared to me to have more meaning.

Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without hesitation, that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a broom-stick, and afterward on a rocking-horse. The very smell of the animals paint—especially when I brought it out, by making him warm—I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterward, in a hackney coach—an institution with the peculiar smell of which the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal to previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom on a headless donkey—at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab—another forgotten institution, where the faro regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver. Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than those of Sindbad the Sailor, I will confine my.self to one experience, from which you may judge; of many.

I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was conscious of something within me, which has