IN the house of a certain farmer a boggart took up his abode. It was not very pleasant having him about, for he was always engaged in mischief when he was not asleep, and I do not think he slept very much. Indeed, every night the people of the house heard his footsteps thumping about from room to room and were alarmed by the clatter of the pewter dishes in the kitchen which he seemed to be rolling and throwing about the floor, though in the morning the dishes were sure to be found replaced on the shelves. But more than anything else the boggart enjoyed tormenting the children. Sometimes their bread and butter would be snatched away, or their porringers of bread and milk be capsized; yet he did this so slyly and got out of the way so quickly that they could not catch him, and they seldom got more than a hasty glimpse of him as he skipped off to shelter. After they went to bed he would come and shake the bed curtains, or he would attempt to pull the bed clothes off, and they would have to clutch at them and hold on with all their might.

When the boggart plagued the children, they of course cried and screamed, and their parents would come running to their aid, but, by the time the father and mother arrived, the boggart would be gone.

They could never discover with certainty where it was that he hid, but they presently learned that he was fond of haunting a rough closet under the kitchen stairway. The closet walls were a thin board partition, and there was a round hole in one of the boards where a good-sized knot had dropped out. One day the youngest boy was playing with the poker, and he stuck it into the knothole. Immediately it was struck from the other side and shot back and hit the boy on the head.

 

The family concluded that this was a prank of the boggart's. Whether he used the knothole to peep from, or whether he simply threw out the poker in sport they did not know, but they found that as often as the poker was replaced in the hole, back it came at once with surprising force. This wonderful performance at length lost the terror with which it was at first regarded, and the children often amused themselves by putting the poker in at the hole and having it shot back at them.

As time went on and the boggart persisted in his tricks, the farmer decided he could bear the tormenting no longer. "We'll move away," said he to his wife, "and let the boggart have the house to himself."

So, as soon as arrangements could be made, the farmer piled his furniture on a big wagon and started to go to a new home. He and his family were walking along beside the wagon when a neighbor met them and said to the farmer, "Well, George, I see you're leaving the old house at last."

"Ah, John, my lad," responded the farmer, "I'm forced to it. You know we've had a boggart in the house, and he has bothered us that much we could neither rest night or day. He seems to have a malice, too, against the children, which is a constant worry to my poor wife here, and so we are obliged to move."

He scarce had uttered the words when a voice from a deep, upright churn at the top of the load cried out, "Yes, yes, George is moving, and I'm moving with him."

"What!" exclaimed the farmer, "are you there? If I'd known I was going to take you along I would never have stirred from home. Mary," he added, turning to his wife, "it's of no use. We may just as well turn back and live in the old house as to go on and be tormented in a new one that is not so convenient."

Back they went and lived as they had hitherto. But in time they came to a better understanding with the boggart, and he seldom troubled them afterward, though he long continued his trick of shooting the poker out of the knothole.