apprehend from me," he continued, "I may inform you that I shall never again occupy my former judicial position; in fact, I am incapacitated from doing so by the fact that I am a GHOST!"
Now, Jemmy Wedge and Bill Slinker were superstitious and nervous to a degree, as most burglars are; and at that announcement their hair rose, and they stood gazing at the speaker with glaring eyes and chattering teeth.
"I am sorry to cause you such alarm," said the spectre, "and assure you I should only be too happy to go; but I cannot—it is not permitted me to do so.
"The balloon in which I ascended was found to have some defect in the valve, which made it impossible to descend; it, consequently, after rising to a great altitude, burst, hurling myself and the three other occupants of the car into the sea. I was unfortunately drowned—a most terrible loss to society! The three others were drowned also; but, as they were neither judges nor counsel, but merely ordinary persons, liable to be called as jurors or witnesses, their loss need not further concern us. If they had survived, they would have been subsequently killed at some time or other by their treatment in court.
"Well, I found myself floating among the disembodied spirits in space; and I became conscious that certain of those in my vicinity were eyeing me askance and whispering together in a menacing and most disturbing manner———" At this point the spectre broke down for a moment, and sobbed audibly, his emotion culminating in the words, "Strike me pink!" He then proceeded: "You must excuse this emotion—the whole thing has been too much for me—djeer?——— in a most menacing and disturbing manner. Now and again these threatening spirits would beckon to their circle certain of those that passed; and these joined them in their minative demonstrations until, knock me funny! if the whole rabble did not surround me, covering me with vituperation. I gleaned from the evidence before me that they were innocent persons who had suffered in consequence of the inadequate punishments I had dealt out to various criminals during my judicial career. There was a woman who had been murdered by her husband after his release from the seven days I had given him for breaking both her arms and legs; there were seven babies who had been made away with by another malefactor, in his joy at escaping with one month for kicking a policeman to death. There were several hundreds of persons who had succumbed to the practices of a purveyor of diseased meat to the London markets who was an especial protégé of mine and whom I always—after the most scathing comments on his villainy—let off with a fine; and so forth.
"These indignant spectres dragged me before three spirits who acted as judges in those parts, and who, as I understood, had formerly been Mahatmas when living; and these, after hearing the evidence before the court, pronounced upon me a most—s'elp me beans!—a most terrible sentence. I was condemned
