I can tell you of a young man I knew who looked into a window at midnight (after he had been playing cards, Miss, gambling with the other boys) and saw something awful strange, and was turned by ghosts into a shadow." This seemed to be a thrilling theme, such as Hawthorne would have been able to weave into the weirdest of weird tales, and I said, "Go on." "Well, he used to go playing cards about three miles from his home with a lot of young men, for his mother wouldn't have cards played in her house, and she thought it was wicked, and begged him not to play.

It's a habit with the young men of Ireland--don't know as it's the same in other countries--and they play for a goose or a chicken.

They go to some vacant house to get away from their fathers, they're so against it at home.

Why, my brother-in-law used to go often to such a house on the side of a country road.

Each man would in turn provide the candles to play by, and as this house was said to be haunted, bedad they had it all to themselves.