When Lord Evandale reluctantly
brought himself to communicate these doubts to the chaplain, in order to
obtain his opinion, he could only obtain a long lecture on demonology, in
which, after quoting Delrio and Burthoog and De L'Ancre on the subject of
apparitions, together with sundry civilians and common lawyers on the
nature of testimony, the learned gentleman expressed his definite and
determined opinion to be, either that there had been an actual apparition
of the deceased Henry Morton's spirit, the possibility of which he was,
as a divine and a philosopher, neither fully prepared to admit or to
deny; or else that the said Henry Morton, being still in /rerum natura/,
had appeared in his proper person that morning; or, finally, that some
strong /deceptio visus/, or striking similitude of person, had deceived
the eyes of Miss Bellenden and of Thomas Halliday. Which of these was the
most probable hypothesis, the doctor declined to pronounce, but expressed
himself ready to die in the opinion that one or other of them had
occasioned that morning's disturbance.
Lord Evandale soon had additional cause for distressful anxiety. Miss
Bellenden was declared to be dangerously ill.
"I will not leave this place," he exclaimed, "till she is pronounced to
be in safety.
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