Now you are going to hear a ghost story published, but he says, not written, by Daniel Defoe the author of 'Robinson Crusoe.' If you read it carefully, you will find how very curious it is.

Miss Veal, or as she was then called according to custom, Mrs. Veal, was an unmarried lady of about thirty living with her only brother in Dover. She was a delicate woman, and frequently had fits, during which she would often stop in the middle of a sentence, and begin to talk nonsense. These fits probably arose from not having had enough food or warm clothes in her childhood, for her father was not only a poor man but also a selfish one, and was too full of his own affairs to look after his children. One comfort, however, she had, in a little girl of her own age, named Lodowick, who often used to bring her neighbour half of her own dinner, and gave her a thick wadded tippet to wear over her bare shoulders.

Years passed away and the girls grew to women, meeting as frequently as of old and reading together the pious books of the day, 'Drelincourt upon Death' being perhaps their favourite. Then gradually a change took place. Old Veal died; the son was given a place in the Customs, and his sister went to keep house for him. She was well-to-do now, and had no longer any need of a friend to provide her with food and clothes, and little by little she became busy with her new life, and forgot the many occasions on which she had exclaimed gratefully to her playfellow, 'You are not only the best, but the only friend I have in the world, and nothing shall ever loosen our friendship.' Now she visited in the houses of people who were richer and grander than herself and sought out her old companion more and more seldom, so that at length when this story begins, two years and a half had passed by without their having seen each other.

Meanwhile, though Mrs. Veal, in spite of a few love affairs, had remained a spinster, her friend had married a Mr. Bargrave, and a very bad match he proved, for the way in which he ill-used his wife soon became known to everyone. They left Dover about a year after Mrs. Bargrave's last visit to Mrs. Veal, and several months later they settled in Canterbury.

It was noon, on September 8, 1705, and Mrs. Bargrave was sitting alone in an armchair in her parlour, thinking over all the misery her husband had caused her and trying hard to feel patient and forgiving towards him. 'I have been provided for hitherto,' she said to herself, 'and doubt not that I shall be so still, and I am well satisfied that my sorrows shall end when it is most fit for me.' She then took up her sewing, which had dropped on her lap, but had hardly put in three stitches when a knocking at the door made her pause. The clock struck twelve as she rose to open it, and to her profound astonishment admitted Mrs. Veal, who had on a riding dress of silk.

'Madam,' exclaimed Mrs. Bargrave, 'I am surprised to see you, for you have been a stranger this long while, but right glad I am to welcome you here.' As she spoke, she leaned forward to kiss her, but Mrs. Veal drew back, and passing her hand across her eyes, she answered:

'I am not very well;' adding after a moment, 'I have to take a long journey, and wished first to see you.'

'But,' answered Mrs. Bargrave, 'how do you come to be travelling alone? I know that your brother looks after you well.'

'Oh, I gave my brother the slip,' replied Mrs. Veal, 'because I had so great a desire to see you before I set forth.'

'Well, let us go into the next room,' said Mrs. Bargrave, leading the way to a small room opening into the other. Mrs. Veal sat down in the very chair in which Mrs. Bargrave had been seated when she heard the knocking at the door. Then Mrs. Veal leaned forward and spoke:

'My dear friend, I am come to renew our old friendship, and to beg you to pardon me for my breach of it. If you can forgive me, you are one of the best of women.'

'Oh! don't mention such a thing,' cried Mrs. Bargrave. 'I never had an unkind thought about it, and can most easily forgive it.'

'What opinion can you have had of me?' continued Mrs. Veal.

'I supposed you were like the rest of the world,' answered Mrs. Bargrave, 'and that prosperity had made you forget yourself and me.'

After that they had a long talk over the old days, and recalled the books they had read together, and what comfort they had received from Drelincourt's Book of Death, and from two Dutch books that had been translated, besides some by Dr. Sherlock on the same subject. At Mrs. Veal's request, Mrs. Bargrave brought Drelincourt's discourses down from upstairs, and handed it to her friend, who spoke so earnestly of the consolations to be found in it that Mrs. Bargrave was deeply touched. But when Mrs. Veal assured her that 'in a short time her afflictions would leave her,' Mrs. Bargrave broke down and wept bitterly.

'Are you going away and leaving your brother without anyone to look after him?' asked Mrs. Bargrave as soon as she could speak.

'Oh no! my sister and her husband had just come down from town to see me, so it will be all right,' answered Mrs. Veal.

'But why did you arrange to leave just as they arrived?' again inquired Mrs. Bargrave. 'Surely they will be vexed?'

'It could not be helped,' replied Mrs. Veal shortly, and said no more on the subject.

After this, the conversation, which continued for nearly two hours, was chiefly carried on by Mrs. Veal, whose language might have been envied by the most learned doctors of the day. But during the course of it Mrs. Bargrave was startled to notice Mrs. Veal draw her hand several times across her eyes (as she had done on her entrance), and at length she put the question, 'Mrs. Bargrave, don't you think I look much the worse for my fits?'

'No,' answered Mrs. Bargrave, 'I think you look as well as ever I saw you.'

'I want you to write a letter for me to my brother,' then said Mrs. Veal, 'and tell him to whom he is to give my rings, and that he is to take two gold pieces out of a purse that is in my cabinet, and send them to my cousin Watson.' Cousin Watson was the wife of a Captain Watson who lived in Canterbury. As there seemed no reason that Mrs. Veal should not write the letter herself, the request appeared rather odd to Mrs. Bargrave, especially as then and afterwards it was the custom for people to leave rings to their friends in their wills. These rings contained little skulls in white enamel, and the initials in gold of the dead.

Mrs. Bargrave wondered if her friend was indeed about to suffer from one of her attacks. So she hastily placed herself in a chair close by her, that she might be ready to catch Mrs. Veal if she should fall, and, to divert her visitor's thoughts, took hold of her sleeve, and began to admire the pattern.

'The silk has been cleaned,' replied Mrs. Veal, 'and newly made up,' and then she dropped the subject and went back to her letter.

'Why not write it yourself?' asked Mrs. Bargrave. 'Your brother may think it an impertinence in me.'

'No,' said Mrs. Veal; 'it may seem an impertinence in you now, but you will discover more reason for it hereafter;' so to satisfy her, Mrs. Bargrave fetched pen and ink and was about to begin when Mrs. Veal stopped her.

'Not now,' she said; 'wait till I am gone; but you must be sure to do it,' and began to inquire for Mrs. Bargrave's little girl, Molly, who was not in the house.

'If you have a mind to see her, I will fetch her home,' answered the mother, and hastily ran over to the neighbour's where the child was. When she returned, Mrs. Veal was standing outside the street door, opposite the market (which was crowded, the day being Saturday and market day), waiting to say good-bye to her.

'Why are you in such a hurry?' inquired Mrs. Bargrave.

'It is time for me to go,' answered Mrs. Veal, 'though I may not start on my journey till Monday. Perhaps I may see you at my cousin Watson's before I depart whither I am hastening.' Then she once more spoke of the letter Mrs. Bargrave was to write, and bade her farewell, walking through the market-place, till a turning concealed her from view.

It was now nearly two o'clock.

The following day Mrs. Bargrave had a sore throat, and did not go out, but on Monday she sent a messenger to Captain Watson's to inquire if Mrs. Veal was there. This much astonished the Watsons, who returned an answer that Mrs. Veal had never been to the house, neither was she expected. Mrs. Bargrave felt sure that some mistake had been made, and, ill though she was, put on her hood and walked to the Watsons' (whom she did not know) to find out the truth of the matter.

Mrs. Watson, who was at home, declared herself unable to understand why Mrs. Bargrave should imagine that Mrs. Veal should be in their house. She had never been in town, Mrs. Watson was persuaded, as if she had, she would certainly have called on them. It was to no purpose that Mrs. Bargrave assured the good lady that Mrs. Veal had spent two hours with her on the previous Saturday; Mrs. Watson simply refused to believe it.

In the midst of the discussion Captain Watson came in and announced that on the previous Friday—September 7, 1705—at noon, Mrs. Veal had died of exhaustion, after one of her fits; and that even at that moment the big painted board with the family coat of arms—called by Captain Watson an 'escutcheon' and by us a 'hatchment'—was being painted in Canterbury. When finished, it would be taken to Dover and hung up in front of the Veals' house. Mrs. Bargrave found the Captain's story impossible to believe, and she went off immediately to the undertaker's shop, where the 'escutcheon' was shown her. Not knowing what to think, she next hastened back to the Watsons, and told the whole tale of Mrs. Veal's visit, describing every particular of her appearance and silk habit, which Mrs. Veal had specially mentioned was scoured. On hearing this, Mrs. Watson cried out excitedly, 'Then you must indeed have seen her, as I helped her myself to make it up, and nobody but she and I knew that it was scoured.'

In this way the Watsons' doubts of the appearance of Mrs. Veal were set at rest, and the story was soon 'blazed' all about the town by the lady, while the Captain took two of his friends to Mrs. Bargrave in order that they might listen to her own account of the strange circumstance, which she gave in exactly the same words as before. Very soon her house was besieged by all sorts of people interested in the story, who saw that Mrs. Bargrave was a straightforward, cheerful person, not at all likely to have invented such a surprising tale.

Amongst those who visited Mrs. Bargrave was the lady whose account was published by Defoe in 1706. Their houses were near together, and they had known each other well for many years. It is she who tells us of various little facts which go far to prove the truth of Mrs. Veal's apparition: how it was discovered that the sister and brother-in-law to whom Mrs. Veal referred really had travelled from London to Dover in order to pay their family a visit but only arrived just as Mrs. Veal was dying; how the servant next door, hanging out clothes in the garden, had heard Mrs. Bargrave talking to someone for above an hour at the very time Mrs. Veal was said to be with her; and how immediately after Mrs. Veal had departed, Mrs. Bargrave had hurried in to the lady next door, and told her that an old friend she feared she had lost sight of had been to see her, and related their conversation.

But Mrs. Veal's brother in Dover was very angry when he heard what was being said in Canterbury, and declared he should go and call on Mrs. Bargrave, who seemed to be making a great deal out of nothing. As to the little legacies which Mrs. Bargrave had mentioned in her letter that Mrs. Veal wished him to give to her friends, why, he had asked his sister on her death-bed—for she was conscious for the last four hours of her life—whether there was anything she desired to dispose of, and she had answered no. But, in spite of Mr. Veal's wrath, everyone believed in Mrs. Bargrave's tale, for they believed in Mrs. Bargrave herself. She had nothing to gain by inventing such a story, and was ready to answer all questions put to her in a plain, straightforward way.

'I asked her,' said the lady from whom Defoe obtained his account, 'if she was sure she felt the gown; she answered, "If my senses are to be relied on, I am sure of it."'

'I asked her if she had heard a sound when Mrs. Veal clapped her hand upon her knee; she said she did not remember that she did, but added: "She appeared to be as much a substance as I did, who talked with her; and I may be as soon persuaded that your apparition is talking to me now as that I did not really see her, for I was under no manner of fear; I received her as a friend and parted with her as such. I would not," she concluded "give one farthing to make anyone believe it, for I have no interest in it."'

From Defoe's day to this many people have read the tale, and several have held it to be a pure invention of the novelist. But some have taken the trouble to search out the history of the persons mentioned in it, and have found that they at any rate were real, and living in Dover and in Canterbury at the very dates required by the story. In the reign of Charles I. a Bargrave had been Dean of Canterbury, and a Richard Bargrave married a widow in the church of St. Alphege in 1700. There had been also Veals connected with Canterbury, which is curious, and we find that a son of William Veal was baptised in St. Mary's, Dover, in August 1707. Now, as Mrs. Veal kept her brother's house when they moved into Dover, he must have married after his sister's death on September 7, 1705. And if we turn over the Parish Register of that very year, we shall see the burial of a 'Mrs. Veal' on September 10.

The Watsons are also to be found in Canterbury, and an 'old Mr. Breton' in Dover, who was known to have given Mrs. Veal £10 a year.

Of course it does not follow from this that, because the characters of the tale published by Defoe only ten months after Mrs. Veal's death were actually alive in the very places where he said we should find them, Mrs. Veal's ghost did really appear to Mrs. Bargrave. But if not, why drag in all these people to no purpose? They could all have contradicted him, but the only person who did so was Mr. Veal himself, and he alone had a motive in disbelieving the appearance of his sister, as he may not have wished to hand over the rings which she had bequeathed to her friends, or to diminish the contents of the purse of gold he was driven to admit that she possessed.

Once more, it is perfectly certain that Mrs. Bargrave told and stood by her story, for in May 1714 a gentleman went to see her and cross-examine her. Mrs. Bargrave said that she did not know the editor of her story, but that it was quite correct except in three or four small points; for instance, that she and Mrs. Veal had talked about the persecution of Dissenters in the time of Charles II. was omitted in the printed version. The gentleman then made the corrections by his copy of the book, and added a long note in Latin about his visit to Mrs. Bargrave on May 21, 1714.

This copy of the book Mr. Aitken found in the British Museum; so, whether we believe Mrs. Bargrave's story or not, she undoubtedly told it, and it was not invented by Defoe.

The facts were discovered by Mr. G. A. Aitken, who published them in his edition of Defoe's tales. He does not seem to have known that in an old book, Dr. Welby's 'Signs before Death,' there is another version, with curious information about Mistress Veal's broken engagement with Major-General Sibourg, killed in the battle of Mons; and about the kinship of the mother of Mrs. Veal with the family of the Earl of Clarendon, which induced Queen Anne, moved by Archbishop Tillotson, to give Mr. Veal his place in the Customs. We also learn that Mrs. Bargrave's cold on the Sunday was caused by the conduct of her husband, who came home intoxicated, found her excited by her interview with Mrs. Veal, and saying, 'Molly, you are hot, you want to be cooled,' led her into the garden, where she passed the night.