Note 10 — Chapter V

My father’s friend, Pastor Fejlberg, who, as a village parson just outside the Old Town, lived the life of the country folk and recorded it with sympathetic understanding, is my authority. I remember him telling a story which only last winter one of his old “boys” recalled to me in California. It was of the village tailor, who, coming home in the small hours of the morning, the worse for many deep potations of the strong mead at the inn, was beset by a ghost that would not let him go. In vain did he try to shake it off at cross-road after cross-road. They all ran like this ✗, and had no power over the children of darkness. The spectre still pursued him, shrieking in ghoulish glee over his failure. Not until he came to two roads that crossed at right angles, forming a true ✚, did he beat it off. There it could not pass, and he got home safe; let us hope, sobered also.