 sincerity. "He
told me with all naked freedom, and a flood of tears, that his friends
were unkind and unjust to him, neither to believe nor pity him; and
that if any man (making a bow to me) would but go with him to the
place, he might be convinced that the thing was real.

"'This woman which appears to me,' saith he, 'lived a neighbour here
to my father, and died about eight years since; her name, Dorothy
Dingley. She never speaks to me, but passeth by hastily, and always
leaves the footpath to me, and she commonly meets me twice or three
times in the breadth of the field.

"'It was about two months before I took notice of it, and though the
shape of the face was in my memory, yet I did not recall the name of
the person, but I did suppose it was some woman who lived there about,
and had frequent occasion that way. Nor did I imagine anything to the
contrary before she began to meet me constantly, morning and evening,
and always in the same field (the Higher Brown Quartils), and
sometimes twice or thrice in the breadth of it.

"'The first time I took notice of her was about a year since, and when
I first began to suspect it to be a ghost, I had courage enough not to
be afraid, but kept it to myself a good while, and only wondered very
much about it. I did often speak to it, but never had a word in
answer. Then I changed my way, and went to school the under Horse
Road, and then she always met me in the narrow lane, between the
Quarry Park and the Nursery, which was worse. At length I began to be
terrified at it, and prayed continually that God would either free me
from it or let me know the meaning of it. Night and day, sleeping and
waking, the shape was ever running in my mind, when, by degrees, I
grew pensive, inasmuch that it was taken notice of by all our family;
whereupon, being urged to it, I told my brother William of it, and he
privately acquainted my father and mother, and they kept it to
themselves for some time.

"'The success of this discovery was only this: they did sometimes
laugh at me, sometimes ch