the manner in which the ghost had proceeded, cut off the beard and hair with the scissars, and soaped his whole head, while his strange companion sat as still as a statue. The awkward youth had never before had a razor in his hand, knew not how to handle it, and shaved the patient ghost so much against the grain, that the sufferer displayed the oddest grimaces. The ignorant bungler began to be afraid; he remembered the wise precept, “Do not meddle with another man’s business,” but still be proceeded, he did as well as he could, and shaved the spectre as clean and as bald as he was himself.
Suddenly the ghost found its tongue; “Kindly I thank thee for the great services thou hast rendered me; by thy means I have been released from long captivity, which, for three hundred years bound me within these walls, where my departed spirit was condemned to dwell, till a mortal man should retaliate on me, and treat me as I did others when I was alive.
“Know that, in times of yore, there dwelt a
