Now, Barney was half cowardly and half brave--that is to say, had he lived in an enlightened age he would have felt little terror of supernatural appearances; but at the period of our story such was the predominance of a belief in ghosts, fairies, evil spirits, and witches, that he should have been either less or more than man could he have shaken off the prevailing superstitions, and the gross credulity of the times in which he lived.

As it was, he knew not what to think.

He remembered the character which had been whispered abroad about Harry Woodward, and of his intercourse with supernatural beings--he was known to possess the Evil Eye; and it was generally understood that those who happened to be endowed with that accursed gift were aided in the exercises of it by the powers of darkness and of evil.
What, then, was he to do?
There probably was an opportunity of solving the mystery which hung around the midnight motions of Woodward.

If there was a spirit before him, there was also a human being, in living flesh and blood--an acquaintance, too--an individual whom he personally knew, ready to sustain him, and afford, if necessary, that protection which, under such peculiar circumstances, one fellow-creature has a right to expect from another.

Now Barney's way home led him necessarily--and a painful necessity it was--near the Haunted House; and he observed that the place where they stood, for they had ceased walking, was about fifty yards above that much dreaded mansion.