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MAGUS

86 secured it is out of danger, or when it is out of reach of human hands, the ghost does not hurt it. But most people reason about it in this way. Any clumsy ghost could perform the mutilation at its leisure in a room by itself and secured against intrusion, but to cut and hack in broad daylight and in the twinkling of an eye, shows the exalted grade of the unearthly visitor. This is no skulking, cowardly ghost that is only fitted for the paltry hole and corner business but a chief among his fellows, a master of line, who could cut off an eyebrow and you looking at him without knowing that anything has happened. The Royal Irish Constabulary imagined when the window-breaking commenced they would handcuff the delinquent, no matter in what form or what species. But, by some process of reasoning known only to themselves, they came to the conclusion that, so long as they wore the Queen’s uniform, nothing would appear. Two of them consequently assumed a non- official garb and in the attire of a couple of inoffensive, innocent-looking peasants, took up their post under a tree in close proximity to the haunted ground, a soft, damp sod beneath their feet, and a clear, frosty might sky above their heads to await the hour that would perhaps immortalise them. Here they waited with the patience and persistency which characterise the race, from dark till the dreaded hour when beings beyond the ken of mortal knowledge are let loose on the earth to frighten sleeping humanity; but nothing offered itself to their fraternal grip. Nothing daunted, they kept their stand till cock-crow, and still nothing for the hungry handcuff, not even anything that “made itself air, into which it vanished”. A very simple but, as it turned out, not efficacious plan was suggested by an old woman, to prevent the stones from making a promenade of the stairs. To effect his desirable object she affirmed that it was only necessary to reverse the operation – namely by throwing one of them up again, when she hoped it would vanish into the air at the top of the stairs – a preliminary incantation, of course, preceding the performance. Some party, however, who disbelieved in the virtue of the charm prepared warm work for her by heating the stone, and the instant she touched it she declared it was not five minutes out of the pit. The rest of the work remains unfinished. Meanwhile, up to the time I write the work of destruction proceeds as vigorously as ever, setting at complete defiance all efforts to discover the cause. A slight rustle is heard in the sitting-room and it is discovered that a pair of window curtains is destroyed, as if a handful had been torn from the middle of each. A hat is laid down, and in a few minutes it is found with the brim out through the band, and torn away on each side. A pair of boots is missing and discovered in the garden, hacked into pieces. The natural consequence of the continuance

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