From these and other anecdotes
that followed, the crusader appeared to be the favourite hero of ghost
stories throughout the vicinity. His picture, which hung up in the hall,
was thought by the servants to have something supernatural about it; for
they remarked that, in whatever part of the hall you went, the eyes of
the warrior were still fixed on you. The old porter's wife, too, at the
lodge, who had been born and brought up in the family, and was a great
gossip among the maid servants, affirmed that in her young days she had
often heard say that on Midsummer eve, when it is well known all kinds
of ghosts, goblins, and fairies become visible and walk abroad, the
crusader used to mount his horse, come down from his picture, ride about
the house, down the avenue, and so to the church to visit the tomb; on
which occasion the church door most civilly swung open of itself: not
that he needed it; for he rode through closed gates and even stone
walls, and had been seen by one of the dairymaids to pass between two
bars of the great park gate, making himself as thin as a sheet of paper.
All these superstitions, I found, had been very much countenanced by the
Squire, who, though not superstitious himself, was very fond of seeing
others so. He listened to every goblin tale of the neighbouring gossips
with infinite gravity, and held the porter's wife in high favour on
account of her talent for the marvellous. He was himself a great reader
of old legends and romances, and often lamented that he could not
believe in them; for a superstitious person, he thought, must live in a
kind of fairyland.
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