Tales and Novels - Volume 02

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

Some years ago, a lad of the name of William Jervas, or, as he was called from his lameness, Lame Jervas, whose business it was to tend the horses in one of the Cornwall tin-mines, was missing. He was left one night in a little hut, at one end of the mine, where he always slept; but in the morning, he could no where be found; and this his sudden disappearance gave rise to a number of strange and ridiculous stories among the miners. The most rational, however, concluded that the lad, tired of his situation, had made his escape during the night. It was certainly rather surprising that he could no where be traced; but after the neighbours had wondered and talked for some time about it, the circumstance was by degrees forgotten. The name of William Jervas was scarcely remembered by any, except two or three of the oldest miners, when, twenty years afterward, there came a party of gentlemen and ladies to see the mines! and, as the guide was showing the curiosities of the place, one among the company, a gentleman of about six-and-thirty years of age, pointed to some letters that were carved on the rock, and asked, "Whose name was written there?" "Only the name of one William Jervas," answered the guide; "a poor lad, who ran away from the mines a great long while ago." "Are you sure that he ran away?" said the gentleman. "Yes," answered the guide, "sure and certain I am of that." "Not at all sure and certain of any such thing," cried one of the oldest of the miners, who interrupted the guide, and then related all that he knew, all that he had heard, and all that he imagined and believed concerning the sudden disappearance of Jervas; concluding by positively assuring the stranger that the ghost of the said Jervas was often seen to walk, slowly, in the long west gallery of the mine, with a blue taper in his hand.—"I will take my Bible oath," added the man, "that about a month after he was missing, I saw the ghost just as the clock struck twelve, walking slowly, with the light in one hand, and a chain dragging after him in t'other; and he was coming straight towards me, and I ran away into the stables to the horses; and from that time forth I've taken special good care never to go late in the evening to that there gallery, or near it: for I never was so frightened, above or under ground, in all my born days."

The stranger, upon hearing this story, burst into a loud fit of laughter; and, on recovering himself, he desired the ghost-seer to look stedfastly in his face, and to tell whether he bore any resemblance to the ghost that walked with the blue taper in the west gallery. The miner stared for some minutes, and answered, "No; he that walks in the gallery is clear another guess sort of a person; in a white jacket, a leather apron, and ragged cap, like what Jervas used to wear in his lifetime; and, moreover, he limps in his gait, as Lame Jervas always did, I remember well." The gentleman walked on, and the miners observed, what had before escaped their notice, that he limped a little; and, when he came again to the light, the guide, after considering him very attentively, said, "If I was not afraid of affronting the like of a gentleman such as your honour, I should make bold for to say that you be very much—only a deal darker complexioned—you be very much of the same sort of person as our Lame Jervas used for to be." "Not at all like our Lame Jervas," cried the old miner, who professed to have seen the ghost; "no more like to him than Black Jack to Blue John." The by-standers laughed at this comparison; and the guide, provoked at being laughed at, sturdily maintained that not a man that wore a head in Cornwall should laugh him out of his senses....