Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

214 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
he succeeded in getting his coat offand, turning the sleeves,
put it on again, when the light immediately disappeared and
he succeeded in getting out of the swamp into South road,
near the place where Dow was executed, and so found his
way home.
The impressions which the story made upon the minds of
the superstitious were of course confirmatory of their belief
in witchcraft. Others, however, who were in the secret
that the bewitched man had spent most of the night in a
gambling establishment, had as strong belief in evil spirits,
but in a different mode of manifestation.
The premises of the Judge however, were entirely exempt from the annoyances of those evil spirits when it
afterward became occupied by the intrepid Captain Thomas
Bell Stevens, if not before that time, as also from the
trouble occupants were subjected to by the frequent spirit
knocking at the front door by night, which unseen hands
occasioned by means of a line attached to the heavy knocker
on the door and passing over the house to Daniel streetthe weaker portion of the line being attached to the knocker
would break upon a sudden jerk, when there was danger
of detection, and so elude discovery.
Such freaks of the boys of that day gave a name to " The
flaunted House," which was retained long after all the
natural causes of the light and noises were satisfactorily
developed, and until it was swept away in the conflagration.
RAMBLE CXXII.
Central Portsmloutthl before the G-reat lFire. - Tichola s:Rousselet- The Mluseuin —S.ailor.Anecdote, &,c.
THE last number was a ramble on the north side of State
street from the water to where the Sherburne house stood
half a century ago.