Classic Audiobook Collection - Madam Crowls Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu ~ Full Audiobook [mystery]

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Madam Crowls Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu audiobook. Genre: mystery In Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu gathers a set of Victorian chillers that blend Gothic atmosphere with unnerving psychological realism. Linked by the shadowy figure of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a physician who studies strange disorders of mind and spirit, the stories unfold as case histories: a young woman takes a post in a gloomy country house where a dead mistress still seems to rule; a respectable clergyman finds his faith and health eroded by a presence only he can perceive; a hardened traveler encounters a relentless figure who follows too closely to be coincidence; and men of status and learning discover that old sins, buried secrets, and private obsessions can summon public ruin. Le Fanu's suspense lies less in sudden shocks than in the slow tightening of dread, where ordinary rooms, familiar faces, and polite conversations begin to feel subtly wrong. Moving between folklore and modern doubt, these tales explore guilt, inheritance, repression, and the porous boundary between supernatural visitation and human breakdown, inviting listeners to decide what is haunting the characters most: ghosts, or themselves. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:29:41) Chapter 02 (01:36:20) Chapter 03 (01:58:11) Chapter 04 (02:18:35) Chapter 05 (02:43:54) Chapter 06 (03:31:44) Chapter 07 (04:30:19) Chapter 08 (04:59:27) Chapter 09 (05:32:37) Chapter 10 (06:25:33) Chapter 11 (06:54:24) Chapter 12 (07:18:21) Chapter 13 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Section 1 of Madame Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by Jay Sheridan, LaFanue. Madam Crowell's Ghost contributed anonymously to all of the year-round in 187071, but afterwards incorporated bodily into Chronicles of Golden Friars 1871, Volume 1. In the story, Laura Mildmay, where it is put in the mouth of an old North Country nurse, Mrs. Jolief. I'm an old woman now, and I was but 13, my wife. last birthday the night I came to Applewale house my aunt was the housekeeper there and a sort of one-horse carriage was down at Lexo to take me in my box up to Applewale I was a bit frightened by the time I got to Lexo and when I saw the carriage and horse I wished myself back again

with my mother at Hazelden I was crying when I got into the Shea that's what we used to call it and old John Mulberry that drove it and was a good-natured fellow bought me a a handful of apples at the golden lion to cheer me up a bit, and he told me that there was a current cake and tea and pork chops waiting for me, all hot in my aunt's room at the great house. It was a fine moonlight night, and I eat the apples, looking out of the shay window. It is a shame for gentlemen to frighten a poor foolish child like I was. I sometimes think it might be tricks. There was two on them, on the tap of the coach beside me, and they began to question me after

nightfall when the moon rose where I was going to, while I told him it was to wait on Dame Arabella Crowell, or Applewale house nearer by Lexo. "'Oh, then,' says one of them, "'you'll not be long there.' And I looked at him as much as to say, why not? For I had spoken out when I told them where I was going, as if twas something clever I had to say. "'Because,' says he, "'and don't you for your life tell no one, only watch her and see. She's possessed by the devil, more than half a ghost.

Have you got a Bible? Yes, sir, says I. For my mother put my little Bible in my box, and I knew it was there. And by the same token, though the print's too small for my old eyes, I have it in my press to this hour. As I looked up at him, saying, Yes, sir, I thought I saw him winking at his friend, but I could not be sure. Well, says he,

Be sure you put it under your bolster every night. It will keep the old girl's claws off you. And I got such a friend. fright when you said that. You wouldn't fancy. And I'd like to ask him a lot about the old lady, but I was too shy, and he and his friend began talking together about their own concerns, and, dully enough, I got down, as I told you, at Lexo. My heart sank as I drove into the dark avenue. The trees stand very thick and big, as old as the old house almost, and four people with their arms out and fingertips touching, barely girds round some of them.

Well, my neck was stretched out of the window, looking for the first few. of the great house, and all at once we pulled up in front of it. A great white and black house it is, with great black beams across and right up it, and gables looking out as white as a sheet to the moon, and the shadows of the trees, two or three up and down upon the front. You could count the leaves on them, and all the little diamond-shaped window panes glimmering on the great hall window, and great shutters in the old-fashioned, hinged on the wall outside, bolted across all the rest of the windows in front, for there was but three or four servants. and the old lady in the house, and most of the rooms was locked up.

My heart was in my mouth when I sawed the journey was over, and this is the great house afore me, and I saw near my aunt that I never sit till new, and dame crawl that I was coming to wait upon and was afeared on already. My aunt kissed me in the hall and brought me to her room. She was tall and thin, with a pale face and black eyes, and long thin hands with black mittens on. She was past fifty,

and her word was short. But her word was law. I have no complaints to make of her, but she was a hard woman, and I think she would have been kinder to me if I had been her sister's child in place of her brothers. But all that's a no consequence now. The squire, his name was Mr. Chevinick's Crowell.

He was Dame Crowell's grandson, came down there by way of seeing that the old lady was well treated, about twice or thrice in the year. I seed him, but twice all the time I was at Applewale House. I can't say, but she was well taken care of. Notwithstanding, but that was because my aunt and Meg Wiverin, that was her maid, had a conscience, and did their duty by her. Mrs. Wivern, Meg Wivern, my aunt called her to herself, and Mrs. Wiverin to me,

was a fat, jolly lass of 50, a good height and a good breadth, always good-humored and walked slow. She had fine wages, but she was a bit stingy and kept all her fine clothes under lock and key, and wore mostly a twilled chocolate cotton with red and yowling. and green sprigs and balls on it, and it lasted wonderful. She never gave me naught, not the valley of brass thimble, all the time I was there, but she was good-humored, and always laughing, and she talked no end to prose over her tea. And seeing me sat, sackless, and dowley, she roused me up with her laughing in stories,

and I think I like her better than my aunt. Children is so taken with a bit of fun or a story, but my aunt was very good to me, but a hard woman about some things, and silent always. My aunt took me into her bedchamber That I might rest myself a bit While she was setting the tea in her room But first she patted me on the shoulder And said I was a tall ass in my years And had spired up well

And asked me if I could do plain work and stitching And she looked in my face And said I was like my father, her brother That was dead and gone And she hoped I was a better Christian And what did I do with that lids It was a hard saying The first time I set my foot in her room

I thought When I went into the next room The housekeeper's room very comfortable, yank, oh, all round. There was a fine fire blazing away, with coal and peat and wood, all in a loo together, and tea on the table and hot cake and smoking meat. And there was Mrs. Wiverin, fat, jolly, and talking away, more than an hour that my aunt would in the year. While I was still at my tea, my aunt went upstairs to see Madame Crowell.

She's a guard up to see that old Judith squales is awake, said Mrs. Wivern. Judith sits with Madame Crowell when me and Mrs. Shutter's. That was my aunt's name. Is away. She's a troublesome old lady. You'll have to be sharp with her, or she'll be in the fire. Or out of the window. She goes on wires she does.

Old, though she be. How old, ma'am? Says a. Ninety-three her last birthday, and that's eight months gone, says she, and she laughed. I don't be asking questions about her before your aunt. Mind I tell you. Just take her as you find her, and that's all. And what's to be my business about her, please, ma'am.

says I. About the old lady, well, says she, your aunt, Mrs. Shutter's, will tell you that, but I'm supposed you'll have to sit in the room with your work and see she isn't no mischief and let her amuse herself with her things on the table and get her food or drink as she calls for it

and keep her out of mischief and ring the bell hard if she's troublesome. Is she deaf, ma'am? No, nor blind, says she, as sharp as a needle, but she's gone quite opie and can't remember, not rightly, and Jack the Giant Kill

her goody two-shoes will please her as well as the King's Court or the affairs of the nation. And what did the little girl go away for, ma'am, that went on Friday night? My aunt wrote to my mother she was to go. Yeah, she's gone. What for? says I again. She didn't answer Mrs. Shutters, I do suppose, says she. I don't know. Don't be talking. Your aunt can't abide a talking child. And please, ma'am, is the old lady well in health? says I. It ain't no harm to ask that, says she.

She's torflin a bit lately, but bet her this week past, and I dare say she'll last out her hundred years yet. Hish, here's your aunt coming down to passage. In comes my aunt, and begins talking to Mrs. Wivern, and I, beginning to feel more comfortable and home-like, was walking about the room looking at this thing and that. That was pretty old china things on the cupboard and pictures against the wall. And there was a door open in the wainscot, and I sees a queer old leather and jacket, with straps and buckles to it and sleeves as long as the bedpost hanging up inside. "'What's that your odd child?' says my aunt, sharp enough,

turning about when I thought she least-minded. "'What's that in her hand?' "'This, ma'am,' says I, turning about with the leather and jacket. "'I don't know what it is, ma'am.' Pale as she was. The red came up in her cheeks, and her eyes flashed with anger, and I think she only had half a dozen steps to take between her and me. She'd give me a sysp, but she did give me a shake by the shoulder,

and she plucked the thing out of my hand, and says she, "'Well, ever you stay here, don't you meddle with naught that don't belong to you,' and she hung it up on the pin that was there, and shut the door with a bang and locked it fast. Mrs. Wiverin was lifting up her hands and laughing all this time, quietly in her chair, rolling herself a bit in it as she used when she was kinking. The tears was in my eyes, and she winked at my aunt and says she drying her own eyes that was wet with the laughing. "'Tut the child meant no harm. Come here, to me, child.

It's only a pair of crotches for lame ducks, and ask us no questions, mine, and we'll tell you no lies, and come here and sit down and drink a mug of beer before you go to your bed. My room, mind you, was upstairs next to the old ladies, and Mrs. Wyvern's bed was near hers in her room, and I was to be ready at call if need should be. The old lady was in one of her tantrums that night and part of the day before. She used to take fits of the sulks. Sometimes she would not let them dress her, another time she would not let them take her clothes off. She was a great beauty, they said, in her day.

But there was no one about Applewale that remembered her in her prime, and she was dreadful fond of dressed, and had thick silks and stiff satins and velvets and laces and all sorts, enough to set up seven shops at the least. All her dresses was old-fashioned and queer, but worth a fortune. Well, I went to my bed. I lay for a while awake, for things was new to me, and I think the tea was in my nerves, too, for I wasn't used to it,

except now and then on a holiday or the like. And I heard Mrs. Wiver and talk. and I listened with my hand to my ear, but I could not hear Mrs. Crowell, and I don't think she said a word. There was great care took of her. The people at Applewell knew that when she died they would, every one, get the sack, and their situations was well-paid and easy. The doctor come twice a week to see the old lady, and you may be sure they all did as he bid them. One thing was the same every time. They were never to cross or frump her anyway, but to humor and please her and everything. So she lay in her clothes all that night, and next day

not a word, she said, and I was at my needlework all that day in my own room, except when I went down to my dinner. I would have liked to see the old lady, and even to hear her speak, but she might as well have been in London a time for me. When I had my dinner, my aunt sent me out for a walk for an hour. I was glad when I came back, the trees was so big and the place so dark and lonesome, and twas a cloudy day, and I cried a deal, thinking of home while I was walking alone there. That evening in the candles being alight, I was sitting in my room, and I was sitting in my room, and the door was open into Madame Crowell's chamber where my aunt was. It was then, for the first time I heard what I suppose, was the old lady talking.

It was a queer noise, like I couldn't well say which, a bird or a beast only. It had a bleating sound in it, and it was very small. I pricked my ears to hear all I could, but I could not make out more than one word she said, and my aunt answered, The evil one can't hurt no one, ma'am, but the Lord permits. Then the same queer voice from the bed Says something more that I couldn't make head nor tail on

And my aunt May it answer again Let them pull faces, Mom, and say what they will If the Lord be for us, who can be against us? I kept listening with my ear Turned to the door, holding my breath But not another word or sound came in from the room In about twenty minutes

As I was sitting by the table Looking at the pictures in the old Esop's fables I was aware of something moving at the door and looking up I seeed my aunt's face looking in the door and her hand raised. Hish! Says she, very soft and comes over to me on tiptoe, and she says in a whisper, Thank God she's asleep at last.

I don't you make no noise till I come back, for I'm going down to take my cup of tea, and I'll be back in, uh, me and Mrs. Wivern, and she'll be sleeping in the room, and you can run down when we come up, and Judith will give you your supper in my room. And with that, away she goes. I kept looking at the picture book, as before, listening every no and then, but there was no sound, not a breath, that I could hear, and I began whispering to the pictures and talking to myself to keep my heart up, for I was growing feared in that big room.

And at last up I got and began walking around the room, looking at this and peeping at that to amuse my mind, you'll understand. And at last, when should I do but peeps into Madam Crow's bedchamber? A grand chamber it was, with a great four-poster, with flowered silk curtains as tall as the ceiling, and folding down on the floor and drawn close all around. There was a looking-glass, the biggest I ever seen before, and the room was a blaze of light. I counted twenty-two wax candles, all the light. Such was her fancy, and no one dared say her nay. I listened at the door and gaped and wondered all around.

When I heard there was not a breath, and did not see so much as a stir in the curtains, I took heart and I walked into the room on tiptoe and looked round again. Then I takes a keek at myself in the big glass, and at last it came in my head. Why couldn't I had a keek at the old lady herself in the bed? You'd think me a fool if you knew half how I longed to see Dame Crowell, and I thought to myself if I didn't peep now, I might wait many a day before I got, so good a chance again. Well, my dear, I came to the side of the bed, the curtains being close,

and my heart almost failed me, but I took courage and I slipped my finger, in between the thick curtains, and then my hand, so I waits a bit, but all was still as death. So softly, softly I draws the curtain, and there, sure enough, I seed before me, stretched out like the painted lady on the tombstein and Lexo church, the famous Dame Crowl of Applewale house. There she was, dressed out. You never see the like in the days, satin and silk and scarlet and green and gold and pint lace. By gin, twas a sight. A big powdered, wig half as high as herself was atop of her head, and wow, was ever such wrinkles. And her old baggy throat all powdered white, and her cheeks, rougeed and mouse-skin eyebrows

that Mrs. Wyvern used to stick on, and there she lay grand and stark, with a pair of clocked silk hose on, and heels to her shoon as tall as nine pins. Look! But her nose was crooked and thin, and half the whites of her eyes was open. She used to stand, dressed as she was, giggling, and dribbling before the looking-glass. with a fan in her hand, and a big nosegay in her bodice. Her wrinkled little hands was stretched down by her sides, and such long nails all cut into points.

I never seed in my days. Could it ever have been the fashion for grit fog to wear their fingernails so? Well, I think you'd have been frightened to yourself if you had seen such a sight. I couldn't let go to the curtain, nor move an inch, not take my eyes off her. My very heart stood still, and in an instant she opens her eyes. And up she sits and spins herself round, and down with her, with a clack on her, two tall heels on the floor facing me,

Oglin in my face, with her two great, glassy eyes, and a wicked sumpur with her old wrinkled lips and long false teeth. Well, the corpse is a natural thing, but this was the dreadfulest sight I ever seen. She had her fingers straight out pointing at me, and her back was crooked, round again with age, says she, "'Ye little limb, what for did you see I killed the boy? "'I'll tickle you till you're stiff.'

"'If I'd a thought an instant I'd have turned about and ran, "'but I couldn't take my eyes off her, "'and I backed from her as soon as I could, "'and she came clattered at her, "'like a thing on wires with her fingers pointing to my throat, "'and she'd makein all the time a sound with her tongue like zizz-z-z. "'I kept back in and backing as quick as I could, "'and her fingers was only a few inches away from my throat,

and I felt I'd lose my wits if she touched me. I went back this way right into the corner, and I gave a yellock. You'd think Saul and body was parting, and that minute my aunt from the door calls out with a blare, and the old lady turns round on her, and I turns about and ran through my room, and down the back stairs as hard as my legs could carry me.

I cried hearty, I can tell you, when I got down to the housekeeper's room. Mrs. Weverin laughed a deal when I told her what happened, but she changed her key when she heard the old lady's words. "'Say that McGahn,' says she. "'So I told her, "'your little limb, "'what for did you say I killed the boy?

"'I'll tickle you till you're stiff.' "'And did you say she killed a boy?' says she. "'Not I, ma'am,' says I. "'Judith was always up with me, "'after that when the two elder women was away from her. "'I would jump out a window rather than stay alone in the same room with her. "'It was about a week after as well as I, I can remember Mrs. Wyvern one day when me and her was alone, told me a thing about

Madame Crowell that I did not know before. She being young, and a great beauty full seven years before, had married Squire Crowell of Applewale, but he was a widower and had a son about nine-year-old. There never was tale or tidings of this boy after one morning. No one could say where he went to. He was allowed too much liberty and used to be off in the morning one day to the keeper's cottage, and breakfast with him, and away to the warren and not home may up till evening, and another time down to the lake and bathe there and spend the day fishing there, or paddle him out in a boat. Well, no one could say what was gone with him.

Only this, that his hat was found by the lake, under a hawthorn, that grows there to this day, and twas thought he was drowned, bathing, and the squire's son, by his second marriage, by this Madame Crowell, that lives so dreadful long, came in for the estates. It was his son, the old lady's grandson, Squire Chevinick's Crowell, that owned the estates at the time I came to Applewale. There was a deal to talk laying before my aunt's time about it, and twas said that a stepmother

knew more than she was liked to let out, and she managed her husband, the old squire, with her white heft and flatteries, and as the boy was never seen more, in course of time the thing died out of folks' minds. I'm going to tell you no about what I seed with my own e'en. I was not there six months, and it was wintertime, when the old lady took her last sickness. The doctor was afeared she might. I took a fit of madness, as she did, 15 years before, and was buckled up many a time in a straight waistcoat, which was the very leather and jerkin I seed in the closet off my aunt's room.

Well, she didn't, she pined and wondered and went off. Torflin and Torflin quiet enough till a day or two before her flitting, and then she took to rablin, and sometimes scurling in the bed, you'd think a robber had a knife to her throat, and she used to work out of the bed, not being strong enough then to walk or stand, she'd fall on the floor, with her old wison hand stretched before her face and scurlin still for mercy. You may guess I didn't go into the room, and I used to be shivering in my bed with fear, at her scurl and scurln and scroflin on the floor, and blaring out words that'd make your skin turn blue.

My aunt and Mrs. Wyvern, and Judas Squales and a woman from Lexo, was always about her. At last she took fits, and they wore her out. To serve, Parson was there, and prayed for her, but she was, was past praying with. I suppose it was right, but none could think there was much good in it, and so at long last she made her flitting, and all was over. And old dame kraal was shrouded and coffined, and Squire Chevinix was wrote for, but he was away in France, and the delay was so long that to sir and doctor both agreed it would not do to keep her longer out of her place, and no one cared but just them too, and my aunt and the rest of us from Applewale to go to

the burying. So the old lady of Applewale was laid in the vault under Lexo Church, and we lived up at the great house till such time as the squire should come to tell his will about us, and pay off such as he chose to discharge. I was put into another room, two days away from what was Dame Crowe's chamber after her death, and this thing happened the night before Squire Chevinix came to Applewale. The room I was in now was a large square chamber, covered with yak panels, but unfurnished except from my bed, which had no curtains to it, and a chair and a table or so. that looked nothing at all in such a big room, and the big looking-glass that the old lady used to keak into and admire herself from head to heel, now that there was, no matter of that work, was put out of the way, and stood against the wall in my room,

for there was shifting of many things in her chambers, you may suppose, when she came to be coffined. The news had come that day that the squire was to be down next morning at Applewale, and not sorry was I, for I thought I was sure to be sent home again to my mother, and right glad was I, and I was thinking of all at home, and my sister Janet and the kitten and the py-mag, and Trimmer the Tyke and all the rest, and I got suffigety. I couldn't sleep in the clock struck twelve, and me wide awake, and the room as dark as pick. My back was turned to the door and my eyes toward the wall opposite.

Well, it couldn't have been a full quarter past twelve when I seized a lightning on the wall before me, as if something took fire behind, and the shadows of the bed and the chair in my gown that was hanging from the wall, was dancing up and down on the ceiling being. and the yak panels, and it turns my head over my shoulder, quick, thinking something must have gone afire. And what should I see by gin? But the likeness of the old bell dame, bedizened out in her satins and velvets on her dead body, simpering with her eyes as wide as saucers in her face like the fiend himself.

It was a red light that rose about her in a fuffing low as if her dress round her feet was blazing. She was driving on right for me, with her old shriveled hands crooked as if she was going to claw me. I could not stir, but she passed me straight by, with a blast of cold air, and I seed her at the wall, in the alcove as my aunt used to call it, which was a recess where the state bed used to stand in old times, but the door opened wide, and her hands groping in at something was there. I never see that door before, and she turned round to me like a thing on a pivot, flaring, grinning, and all at once the room was dark, and I was standing at the

far side of the bed. I don't know how it got there, and I found my tongue at last, and if I was I didn't blare a yellock, ran it down the gallery and almost pulled Mrs. Wyvern's door off to hooks, and frightened her half out of her wits. You may guess I didn't sleep that night, and with the first light down with me, to my aunt, as fast as my two legs could carry me. Well, my aunt didn't frump or flight me, as I thought she would, but she held me by the hand, and looked hard in my face all the time, and she told me not to be feared, and says she, had the appearance a key in its hand. Yes, says I, bringing it to mind. A big key in a queer brass handle

Stop a bit Says she letting go on my hand And open in the cupboard Was it like this? Says she, taking out one of our fingers And showing it to me with a dark look in my face That was it, says I, quick enough Are you sure?

She says turning it round Sart, says I And I felt like I was gained to faint When I seed it Well, that will do, child Says she softly thinking And she locked it up again the squire himself will be here today before twelve o'clock and ye must tell him all about it says she thinking and i suppose i'll be leaving soon and so the best thing for present is that ye should go home this afternoon and i'll look out another place for you when i can fain was i you may guess at that word my aunt packed up my things for me and the three pounds that was due to me to bring home and the squire kraal himself came down applewell that day a handsome man about thirty years i'd it was the second time i seed him but this was the three pounds that was due to me but this

was the first time he spoke to me. My aunt talked with him in the housekeeper's room, and I don't know what they said. I was a bit feared on the squire. He'd be in a great gentleman down in Lexo, and I darn't go near till I was called, and says he, smiling, "'What's of this you seen, child? It mun be a dream, for you know there is no such thing as a bow or a freight in the world, but whatever it was, my little maid, sit you down and tell us all about it, from first to last. Well, so soon as I made an end, he thought a bit and says he to my aunt. I mind the place well. In old Sir Oliver's time, lame Wendell told me there was a door in that recess to the left, where the lassie dreamed she saw my grandmother open it.

He was past 80 when he told me that, and I but a boy, it's 20 years since. The plate and jewels used to be kept there long ago, before the iron closet was made in the arras chamber, and he told me the key had a brass handle, and this you say was found in the bottom of the the kissed, where she kept her old fans. Now, would not it be a queer thing if we found some spoons or diamonds forgot there? You mung come up with, Lassie, and point to the very spot. Loth was I, in my heart and my mouth, and fast as I held by my aunt's hand, as I stepped into that awesome room, and showed them both how she came and passed me by, and the spot where she stood and where the door seemed to open. There was an old empty press against the wall,

then, and shoving it aside, sure enough, there was the tracing of a door in the way and Scott, and a key stopped with wood, implaimed across as smooth as the rest, and the joining of the door all stopped with putty, and the color of yak, and but for the hinges that showed a bit when the press was shoved aside, you would not consent that there was a door there at all. Ha! says he, with a queer smile. This looks like it! It took some minutes with a small chisel and hammer to pick a bit of wood out of the keyhole. The key fitted, sure enough, and with a strange twist and a lying screek, the bolt went back and he pulled the door open. There was another door inside, stranger than the first, but the lax were gone, and it opened easy.

Inside was a narrow floor and walls and vaulted brick. We could not see what was in it, for it was darkest pick. When my aunt had lighted the candle, the squire held it up and stepped in. My aunt stood on tiptoe trying to look over his shoulder, and I didn't see no. "'Ha, ha,' said the squire, stepping backward. "'What's that? Give me the poker, quick,' says he to my aunt, and as she went to the hearth, I peeps beside his arm, and I seed squat down in the far corner a monkey, or a flaying on the chest, or else the most shriveled up, wisen, old wife that

ever was seen on earth. "'By gin,' says my aunt, as putting the poker in his hand, she kicked by his shoulder, and seed the ill-favored thing. "'Hey, I care, sir, what you're doing, back with you, and shut to the door.' But in place of that he steps in safely, with the poker pointed like a sword, and he gaze at a poke, and down at it tumbles together, head and awe, in a heap of bions and dust, little mare and a hatful. It was the bones of a child, and the rest went to dust at a touch. They said not for a while, but he turns round the skull as it lay on the floor.

Young as I was, I was consated, I knew well. enough what they was thinking on. A dead cat, says he, push him back and blowing out the candle, and shut into the door. We'll come back, you and me, Mrs. Shutters, and look on the shelves by and by. I have other matters first to speak to you about, and this little girl's going home, you see. She has her wages, and I'm mum-maker present, says he patting my shoulder with his hand. And he did give me a good pound, and I went off to Lex Ho about an hour after, and say home by the stagecoach, and fain was I to be home again, and I never seen.

saw old Dame Crowell, Apewale, God be thanked, Either in appearance or in dream, I'd heft her. But when I was grown to be a woman, My aunt spent a day and night with me at Little Ham, And she told me there was no doubt It was the poor little boy that was missing,

Salung Sin that was shut up to die thar in the dark By that wicked bell dame, Where his scurls or his prayers or his thumping could ne'er be heard. And his hat was left by the water's edge, Whoever did it, to make belief he was drowned. To close at the first touch, I ran into a snuff of dust in the cell what the bayons was found, but there was a handful of jet buttons and a knife,

with a green handle, together with a couple of pennies, the poor little fellow had in his pocket. I suppose when he was decoyed in there, and seeed his last of the light, and there was among the squire's papers a copy of the notice that was printed after he was lost, when the old squire thought he might have run away, or bin took by gypsies,

and he said he had a green hefted knife with him, and that his buttons were a cut jet. So that is all I have to say concerning old Dame Crowell, an Applewale house. End of Section 1, Madam Crowell's Ghost. Section 2 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheridan Lefanoe. The Slibervon's Recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Squire Toby's Will, a ghost story. Anonymous in Temple Bar.

1868, volume 22. This story was written, it seems, contemporaneously with the novel The Wyvern Mystery, 1868, 69, and the old squire in that book intimately resembles Squire Toby. Many persons accustomed to travel the old York and London Road in the days of the stagecoaches will remember passing in the afternoon, say, of an autumn day, in their journey to the capital, about three miles south of the town of Appleberry, and a mile and a half before you reach the old Angel Inn, a large black and white house, as those old-fashioned cage-work habitations are termed,

dilapidated and weather-stained, with broad lattice windows glimmering all over in the evening sun with little diamond panes, and thrown into relief by a dense background of ancient elms. A wide avenue now overgrown like a churchyard with grass and weeds, and flanked by double rows of the same dark trees old and gigantic, with here and there a gap in their solemn files, and sometimes a fallen tree lying on, across on the avenue leads up to the hall door. Looking up its sombre and lifeless avenue from the top of the London coach, as I have often done, you are struck with so many signs of desertion and decay, the tufted grass sprouting in the

chinks of the steps and window stones, the smokeless chimneys over which the jackdaws are wheeling, the absence of human life and all its evidence, that you conclude at once that the place is uninhabited and abandoned to decay. The name of this ancient house is the Jillingdon Hall. Tall hedges and old timber quickly shroud the old place from view, and about a quarter of a mile further on you pass, empowered in the melancholy trees, a small and ruinous Saxon chapel, which, time out of mind, has been the burying place of the family of Marston, and partakes of the neglect and desolation which brood over their ancient dwelling place. The grand melancholy of the secluded valley of Jilenden, lonely as an enchanted

forest, in which the crows returning to their roosts among the trees, and the straggling deer who peeped from beneath their branches, seem to hold a wild and undisturbed dominion, heightens the forlorn aspect of Jilenden Hall. Of late years, repairs have been neglected, and here and there the roof is stripped, and the stitch in time has been wanting. At the side of the house exposed to the gales that sweep through the valley like a torrent through its channel, there is not a perfect window left, and the shutters but imperfectly exclude the rain. The ceilings and walls are mildewed and green with damp stains.

Here and there where the drip falls from the ceiling, the floors are rotting. On stormy nights, as the guard described, you can hear the doors clapping in the old house, as far away as old Gryston Bridge, and the howl and sobbing of the wind through its empty galleries. About 70 years ago died the old squire, Toby Marston, famous in that part of the world for his hounds, his hospitality, and his vices. He had done kind things, and he had fought duels. He had given away money, and he had horse-wept people.

He carried with him some blessings and a good many curses, and left behind him an amount of debts and charges upon the estates which appalled his two sons, who had no taste for business or accounts, and had never suspected, till that wicked, open-handed, and swearing old gentleman died, how very nearly he had run the estates into insolvency. They met at Jilenden Hall. They had the will before them, and lawyers to interpret, and information without stint as to the encumbrances

with which the deceased had saddled them. The will was so framed as to set the two brothers instantly at deadly feud. These brothers differed in some points, but in one material characteristic they resembled one another, and also their departed father. They never went into a quarrel by halves, and once in they did not stick at trifles. The elder, Scroop Marston, the more dangerous man of the two, had never been a favorite of the old squire. He had no taste for the sports of the field and the pleasures of a rustic life. He was no athlete, and he certainly was not handsome.

All this the squire resented. The young man who had no respect for him, and outgrew his fear of his violence as he came to manhood retorted. This aversion, therefore, in the ill-conditioned old man, grew into positive hatred. He used to wish that damned Pippin-squeezing, hump-backed rascal, Scroop out of the way of better men, meaning his younger son Charles,

and in his cups would talk in a way which even the old and young fellows who followed his hounds and drank his port, and could stand a reasonable amount of brutality, did not like. Scroop Marston was slightly deformed, and he had the lean, sallow face piercing black eyes and black-length hair, which sometimes accompanied deformity. I'm no fader of that hog-backed creature. I'm no sire of hisen.

Damn him. I'd as soon call that tongues, son of mine. The old man used to bawl, an allusion to his son's long-length limbs. Charlie's a man, but that jack-o'-epe, he has no good nature. There's nothing handy, nor manly, nor no unturn of a marston in him. and when he was pretty drunk, the old squire used to swear he should never sit at the head of that board nor frighten away folk from Jillenden Hall with his damned hatchet face, the black loon. Handsome Charlie was the man for his money.

He knew what a horse was and could sit to his bottle, and that lasses were all clean mad about him. He was amassed in every inch of his six foot two. Handsome Charlie and he, however, had also had a row or two. The old squire was free with his horse whip, as with his tongue. and on occasion when neither weapon was quite practicable, had been known to give a fellow a tap o his knuckles. Handsome Charlie, however, thought there was a period at which personal chastisement should cease, and one night, when the port was flowing, there was some allusion to Marion Hayward,

the Miller's daughter which for some reason the old gentleman did not like. Being in liquor and having clearer ideas about pugilism than self-government, he struck out, to the surprise of all present at Hensom Charlie. The youth threw back his head scientifically, and nothing followed but the crash of a decanter on the floor. But the old squire's blood was up, and he bounced from his chair. Up jumped Handsome Charlie, resolved to stand no nonsense. Drunken Squire Lilbourne, intending to mediate, fell flat on the floor and cut his ear among the glasses. Handsome Charlie caught the thump which the old squire discharged at him upon his open hand,

and catching him by the cravat, swung him with his back to the wall. They said the old man never looked so purple, nor his eyes so goggled before, and then handsome Charlie pinioned him tight to the wall by both arms. Well, I see, come, don't you talk no nonsense of that sort, and I won't lick you, croaked the old squire. You stopped that in clever you did, didn't he? Come, Charlie, man, giz your hand, I see, and sit down again, lad. And so the battle ended, and I believe it was the last time the squire raised his hand to handsome Charlie. But those days were over. Old Toby Marston lay cold and quiet now Under the drip of the mighty ash tree within the Saxon ruin

Where so many of the old Marston race returned to dust and were forgotten. The weather-stained top boots and leather breeches, The three-cornered cocked hat to which old gentleman of that day still clung, And the well-known red waistcoat that reached below his hips, And the fierce pug face of the old squire were now but a picture of memory. And the brothers between whom he had planned, and irreconcilable quarrel were now in their new morning suits. With the gloss still on, debating furiously across the table in the great oak parlor,

which had so often resounded to the banter in coarse songs, the oaths and laughter of the congenial neighbors, whom the old squire of Jillenden Hall loved to assemble there. These young gentlemen, who had grown up in Jillenden Hall, were not accustomed to bridle their tongues, nor, if need be, to hesitate about a blow. Neither had been at the old man's funeral. His death had been sudden.

Having been helped to his bed in that hilarious and quarrelsome state, which was induced by port and punch, he was found dead in the morning, his head hanging over the side of the bed, and his face very black and swollen. Now the squire's will despoiled his eldest son of Jilandon, which had descended to the heir time out of mind. Scroop Marston was furious. His deep stern voice was heard, invaying against his dead father and living brother, and the heavy thumps on the table with which he enforced his stormy recriminations resounded through the large chamber. Then broke in Charles' rougher voice, and then came a quick alternation of short sentences, and then both voices together in growing loudness and anger, and at last swelling the tumult,

the expostulations of Pacific and frightened lawyers, and at a last sudden breakup of the conference. Scroop broke out of the room his pale, furious face, showing wither against his long black hair, his dark fierce eyes blazing, his hands clenched, and looking more ungainly and deformed than ever in the convulsions of his fury. Very violent words must have passed between them. For Charlie, though he was the winning man, was almost as angry as scroop. The elder brother was for holding possession of the house and putting his rival to legal process to oust him. But his legal advisers were clearly against it. So with a heart boiling over with Gaul, he went up to London, and found the firm who had managed his father. business, fair and communicative enough. They looked into the settlements and found that Gillingdon was accepted. It was very odd, but so it was, specially accepted, so that the right

of the old squire to deal with it by his will could not be questioned. Notwithstanding all this, scroop, breathing vengeance and aggression and quite willing to wreck himself, provided he could run his brother down, assailed handsome Charlie, and battered old squire Toby's will in the prerogative of court, and also at common law, and the feud between the brothers was knit, and every month their exasperation was heightened. Scroop was beaten, and defeat did not soften him. Charles might have forgiven hard words, but he had been himself worsted during the long campaign in some of those skirmishes, special motions and so forth, that constitute the episodes of a legal epic like that in which the Marston brothers figured as opposing combatants, and the blight of law costs had touched him, too,

with the usual effect upon the temper of a man of embarrassed means. Years flew and brought no healing on their wings. On the contrary, the deep corrosion of this hatred bit deeper by time. Neither brother married, but an accident of a different kind befell the younger, Charles Marston, which abridged his enjoyments very materially. This was a bad fall from his hunter. There were severe fractures, and there was concussion of the brain. For some time it was thought that he could not recover.

He disappointed these east, Evil auguries, however, he did recover but changed into essential particulars. He had received an injury in his hip, which doomed him never more to sit in the saddle, and the rollicking animal spirits which hitherto had never failed him, had now taken flight forever. He had been for five days in a state of coma, absolute insensibility, and when he recovered consciousness he was haunted by an indescribable anxiety. Tom Cooper, who had been Butler in the palmy days of Jillingdon Hall, under old squire Toby, still maintained his post with old-fashioned fidelity in these days of

faded splendor and frugal housekeeping. Twenty years had passed since the death of his old master. He had grown lean and stooped, and his face dark with the peculiar brown of age, furrowed and gnarled, and his temper, except with his master, had waxed surly. His master had visited Bath and Buxton and came back as he went, lame and halting gloomily about with the aid of a stick. When the hunter was sold, the last tradition of the old life at Gillingdon disappeared. The young squire, as he was still called, excluded by his mischance from the hunting field, dropped into a solitary way of life, and halted slowly and solitarily about the old place,

seldom raising his eyes and with an appearance of indescribable gloom. Old Cooper could talk freely on occasion with his master, and one day he said as he handed him his hat and stick in the hall, You should rouse yourself up a bit, Master Charles. It's past rousing with me, old Cooper. That's just this. I'm thinking there's something on your mind, and you won't tell no one. There's no good keeping it on your stomach.

You'll be a deal lighter if you tell it. Come now, what is it, Master Charlie? The squire looked with his round, gray eyes, straight into Cooper's eyes. He felt that there was a sort of spell broken. It was like the old rule of the ghost who can't speak till it is spoken to. He looked earnestly into old Cooper's face for some second. and sighed deeply. "'It ain't the first good guess you've made in your day, old Cooper, and I'm glad you spoke.

It's been on my mind, sure enough, ever since I had that fall. Come in here after me and shot the door.' The squire pushed open the door of the oak parlor and looked round on the pictures abstractedly. He had not been there for some time, and seating himself on the table he looked again for a while in Cooper's face before he spoke. "'It's not a great deal, Cooper, but it troubles me, and I would not tell it to the parson.' nor the doctor, for God knows what they'd say, though there's nothing to signify in it. But you're always true to the family, and I don't mind if I tell you.

"'Tis as safe with Cooper, Master Charles, as if twas locked in a chest and sunken well.' "'It's only this,' said Charles Marston, looking down on the end of his stick with which he was tracing lines and circles. "'All the time I was lying like dead, as you thought after that fall, I was with the old master.' He raised his eyes to Cooper's again as he spoke, and with an awful oath he repeated, "'I was with him, Cooper.' "'He was a good man, sir, in his way,' repeated old Cooper, returning his gaze with awe. "'He was a good master to me, and a good father to you, and I hope he's happy. May God rest him.'

"'Well,' said Squire Charles, "'it's only this. "'The whole of that time I was with him, or he was with me, I don't know which. The upshot is we were together And I thought I'd never get out of his hands again And all the time he was bullying me about some one thing And if it was to save my life Tom Cooper by From the time I waked I never could call to mind what it was And I think I'd give that hand to know

And if you can think of anything it might be For God's sake, don't be afraid Tom Cooper But speak it out for he threatened me hard And it was surely him Here ensued a silence And what did you think it might be yourself, Master Charles? said Cooper. I hadn't thought of ought that's likely.

I'll never hit on it. Never. I thought it might happen. He knew something about that damn humpback villain's group that swore before a lawyer, Gingham I made away with the paper of settlements, me and my father, and as I hope to be saved, Tom Cooper, there never was a bigger lie. I'd have the law of him for them identical words,

and cast him for more than he's worth. Only lawyer Gingham never goes into nothing for me since money grew scarce in Gillinden, and I can't change my lawyer. I owe him such a hatful of money. But he did, he swore he'd hang me yet for it. He said in my identical words. He'd never rest till he hanged me for it.

I think it was, like enough, something about that. The old master was troubled. But it's enough to drive a man mad. I can't bring it to mind. I can't remember a word, he said, only threatened awful and looked, Lord of mercy on his frightful bad. There's no need he should.

"'May the Lord a mercy on him,' said the old butler. "'No, of course. You're not to tell a soul, Cooper, "'not a living soul mind that I said he looked back, "'nor nothing about it. "'God forbid,' said old Cooper, shaking his head. "'But I was thinking, sir, "'it might have been about the slight that's been so long put on him "'by having no stone over him

"'and never a scratch or chisel to say who he is. "'Aye, well, I didn't think of that. "'Put on your hat, O Cooper, and come down with me, for I'll look after that at any rate. There is a by-path leading by a turnstile to the park, and thence to the picturesque old burying place which lies in a nook by the roadside, embowered in ancient trees.

It was a fine autumnal sunset, and melancholy lights and long shadows spread their peculiar effects over the landscape as handsome Charlie, and the old butler made their way slowly toward the place where handsome Charlie was himself to lie at last. "'Which of the dogs made the howling all last night?' asked the squire when they had got on a little way. "'Twas a strange dog, Master Charlie, in front of the house.

"'Ours was all in the yard. "'A white dog with a black head. "'He looked to be, "'and he was smelling round him, "'some mounting steps, the old master. "'God bewit him. "'Sat up the time his knee was bad. "'When the tight got up atop of him,

"'howling up the windows, "'I'd like to shy something at him.' "'Hello, is that like him?' "'said the squire, stopping short "'and pointing with his stick at a dirty white dog with a large black head, which was scampering round them in a wide circle, half-crowching with that air of uncertainty and deprecation

which dogs so well know how to assume. He whistled the dog up. He was a large, half-starved bulldog. That fellow has made a long journey. Then as a whip-in-post and a stand all over, and his claws worn into the stumps, said the squire musingly. He isn't a bad dog, Cooper. My father liked a good bulldog,

and knew a cur from a gooden. The dog was looking up. up into the squire's face with the peculiar grim visage of his kind, and the squire was thinking irreverently how strong a likeness it presented to the character of his father's fierce pug features when he was clutching his horsewhip and swearing at a keeper. "'If I did right I'd shoot him. He'll worry about the cattle and kill our dogs,' said the squire. "'Hey, Cooper, I'll tell the keeper to look after him. That fellow could pull down a sheep and he shan't live on my mutton.' But the dog was not to be shaken off. He looked wistfully after the

squire. And after they had got a little way on, he followed timidly. It was vain trying to drive him off. The dog ran round them in wide circles, like the infernal dog and Faust, only he left no track of thin flame behind him. These maneuvers were executed with a sort of beseeching air, which flattered and touched the object of this odd preference. So he called him up again, patted him, and then and there in a manner adopted him. The dog now followed their steps dutifully, as if he had belonged to handsome Charlie all his days. Cooper unlocked the little iron door and the dog walked in close behind their heels

and followed them as they visited the roofless chapel. The Marstons were lying under the floor of this little building in rows. There is not a vault. Each has his distinct grave enclosed in a lining of masonry. Each is surmounted by a stone kissed, on the upper flag of which is enclosed his epitaph, except that of poor old squire Toby.

Over him was nothing but the grass and the line of masonry, indicate the sight of the kist, whenever his family should afford him one like the rest. Well, it does look shabby. It's the elder brother's business, but if he won't, I'll see to it myself, and I'll take care, old boy, to cut sharp and deep in it, but the elder son, having refused to lend a hand, the stone was put there by the younger. They strolled round this little burial ground. The sun was now below the horizon, and the red metallic glow from the clouds, still illuminated by the departed sun, mingled luridly with the twilight.

When Charlie peeped again into the little chapel, he saw the ugly dog stretched upon Squire Toby's grave, looking at least twice his natural length, and performing such antics as made the young Squire stare. If you have ever seen a cat stretched on the floor with a bunch of Valerian, straining, writhing, rubbing its jaws and long-drawn caresses, and, in the absorption of a sensual ecstasy, you have seen a phenomenon resembling that which handsome Charlie witnessed on looking in. The head of the brute looked so large, its body. so long and thin, and its joints so ungainly and dislocated, that the squire, with old Cooper beside him, looked on with a feeling of disgust and astonishment, which, in a moment

or two more, brought the squire's stick down upon him with a couple of heavy thumps. The beast awakened, from his ecstasy, sprang to the head of the grave, and there on a sudden, thick and bandy as before, confronted the squire, who stood at its foot with a terrible grin, and eyes that glared with the peculiar green of canine fury. The next moment the dog was crouching abjectly at the squire's feet. Well, he's a Roman, said old Cooper, looking hard at him. I like him, said the squire. I don't, said Cooper.

But he shan't come in here again, said the squire. I shouldn't wonder if he was a witch, said old Cooper, who remembered more tales of witchcraft than are now current in that part of the world. He's a good dog, said the squire dreamily. I remember the time I'd have given a handful for him, but I'll never be good for nothing again. Come along. And he stooped down and patted him.

So up jumped to the dog and looked up in his face, as if watching for some sign ever so slight, which he might obey. Cooper did not like a bone in that dog's skin. He could not imagine what his master saw to admire in him. He kept him all night in the gun room, and the dog accompanied him in his halting rambles about the place. The fonder his master grew of him,

the less did Cooper and the other servants like him. "'He hasn't a point of a good dog about him,' Cooper would growl. "'I think Master Charlie be blind. "'An old Captain,' an old red parrot who sat chained to a perch in the oak parlor, "'and conversed with himself and nibbled at his claws and bit his perch all day. "'Old Captain, the old living thing, except one or two of us, "'and the squire himself that remembers the old master the men as he saw the dog, "'screeched as if he was struck, shaking his feathers out quite wild,

"'and drops down, poor old soul, a hanging by his foot and a fit.' But there is no accounting for fancies, and the squire was one of those dogged persons who persist more obstinately in their whims the more they are opposed. But Charles Marston's health suffered by his lameness. The transition from habitual and violent exercise to such a life as his privation now consigned him to was never made without a risk to health. And a host of dyspeptic annoyances, the existence of which he had never dreamed of before, now beset him in sad earnest. Among these was the now not-unfrequent troubling of his sleep with dreams and nightmares. In these his canine favorite invariably had a part and was generally a central and sometimes a solitary figure. In these visions, the dog seemed to stretch himself up the side of the squire's bed,

and in dilated proportions to sit at his feet, with a horrible likeness to the pug features of old squire Toby, with his tricks of wagging his head and throwing up his chin, and then he would talk to him about Scroop and tell him all wasn't straight, and that he must make it up with Scroop, that he, the old squire, had served him an ill turn, that time was nigh up, and that fair was fair, and he was troubled where he was about Scroop. Then in his dream this semi-human brute would approach his face to his,

crawling and crouching up his body, heavy as led till the face of the beast was laid on his, with the same odious caresses and stretchings and writhing, which he had seen over the old squire's grave. Then Charlie would wake up with a gasp and a howl, and start upright in the bed, bathed in a cold moisture, and fancy he saw something white sliding off the foot of the bed.

Sometimes he thought it might be the curtain, with white lining this slipped down, or the coverlet disturbed by his uneasy turnings. But he always fancied at such moments that he saw something white sliding hastily off a bed, and always when he had been visited by such dreams the dog next morning was more than usually caressing and servile, as if to obliterate by a more than ordinary welcome the sentiment of disgust which the horror of the night had left behind it.

The doctor half satisfied the squire that there was nothing in these dreams, which, in one shape or another, invariably attended forms of indigestion such as he was suffering from. For a while, as if to corroborate this theory, the dog ceased altogether to figure in them. But at last there came a vision in which, Unpleasantly than before, he did resume his old place. In his nightmare, the room seemed all but dark. He heard what he knew to be the dog walking from the door around his bed slowly, to the side from which he always had come upon it.

A portion of the room was uncarpeted, and he said he distinctly heard the peculiar tread of a dog, in which the faint clatter of the claws is audible. It was a light stealthy step, but at every tread the whole room shook heavily. He felt something place itself at the foot of his bed, and saw a pair of green eyes staring at him in the dark, from which he could not remove his own. Then he heard, as he thought, the old squire Toby, say, The eleventh hour be past. Charlie, and you've done nothing. You and I have done scrupa wrong.

And then came a good deal more, and then, The times nigh up, it's going to strike! And with a long low growl, the thing began to creep up upon his feet. The growl continued, and he saw the reflection of the upturned green. eyes upon the bedclothes as it began slowly to stretch itself up his body towards his face. With a loud scream he waked. The light, which of late the squire was accustomed to have in his bedroom, had accidentally gone out. He was afraid to get up, or even to look about the room for some time. So sure did he feel of seeing the green eyes in the dark fixed on him from some corner.

He hardly recovered from the first agony which nightmare leaves behind it, and was beginning to collect his thoughts when he heard the clock strike twelve, and he bethought him of the words, The eleventh hour be past, Times nigh up, it's going to strike, and he almost feared that he would hear the voice reopening the subject. Next morning the squire came down, looking ill. Do you know a rule, old Cooper? said he.

They used to call King Herod's chamber. I, sir, the story of King Herod was on the walls, when I was a boy. There's a closet off of it, is there? I can't be sure of that, but does it worth your looking at now? The hangings was rotten and took off the walls before he was born, and there's naught there but some old broken things in lumber. I see them put there myself by poor Twink's.

He was blind of an eye and footman afterwards. You'll remember Twinks. He died here about the time of the great snow. There was a deal of work to bury him, poor fellow. Get the key, old Cooper. I'll look at the room, said, the squire. And what the devil can you want to look at it for?

said Cooper, with the old world privilege of a rustic butler. And what the devil's that to you? But I don't mind if I tell you. I don't want that dog in the gunroom, and I'll put him somewhere else, and I don't care if I put him there. A bulldog in a bedroom. Oh, and sir, the folks will say your clean mud. Well, let them get you the key, and let us look at the room. You'd shoot him if you did right, Master Charlie.

You never heard what a need. noise he kept up all last night in the gunroom, walking to and fro, growling like a tiger in a show, and say what you like. The dog's not worth his feed. He hasn't a point of a dog. He's a bad dog. I know a dog better than you, and he's a good dog, said the squire testily. If he was a judge of a dog, you'd hang that, and said Cooper. I'm not a-going to hang him. So there's an end. Go you and get the key. And don't be talking, mind when you go down. I may change my mind. Now this freak of visiting Herod's room had in truth a totally different object from that pretended by the squire. The voice in his nightmare had uttered a particular direction, which haunted him, and would give him

no peace until he had tested it. So far from lacking that dog today he was beginning to regard it with a horrible suspicion, and if old Cooper had not stirred his obstinate temper by seeming to dictate, I dare say he would have got rid of that inmate effectually before evening. Up to the third story, long disused, he and old Cooper mounted. At the end of a dusty gallery the room lay. The old tapestry from which the spacious chamber had taken its name had long given place to modern paper, and this was mildewed, and in some places hanging from the walls. A thick mantle of dust lay over the floor. Some broken chairs and boards, thick wood dust, lay along with the other lumber piled together

at one end of the room. They entered the closet which was quite empty. The squire looked round, and you could hardly have said whether he was relieved or disappointed. "'No furniture here,' said the squire, and looked through the dusty window. "'Did you say anything to me lately? I don't mean this morning. "'About this room or the closet or anything, I forget. "'Lord bless you, not I. I hadn't been thinking of this room this forty-year.' "'Is there any sort of old furniture called a Buffet? Do you remember?' asked the squire. "'Buffet. Yes, to be sure. There was a buffet, sure enough, in this closet,

"'now that you bring it to my mind,' said Cooper. but it's papered over. And what is it? A little cupboard in the wall, answered the old man. Oh, I see. There's such a thing here, is there, under the paper. Show me whereabouts it was. Well, I think it was somewhere about here,

answered he, wrapping his knuckles along the wall opposite the window. Aye, there it is, he added as the hollow sound of a wooden door was returned to his knock. The squire pulled the loose paper from the wall and disclosed the doors of a small press, about two feet square fixed in the wall. The very thing for my buckles and pistols on the rest of my gimcracks, said the squire. Come away, we'll leave the dog where he is. Have you the key of that little press? No, he had not.

The old master had emptied and locked it up and desired that it should be papered over, and that was the history of it. Down came the squire and took a strong turn-screw from his gun-case, and quietly he re-ascended to King Herod's room, and, with little trouble, forced the door of the small press in the closet wall. wall. There were in it some letters, uncanceled leases, and also a parchment deed which he took to the window and read with much agitation. It was a supplemental deed executed about a fortnight after the others, and previously to his father's marriage, placing Gillingdon under strict

settlement to the elder son in what is called tail-mail. Handsome Charlie and his fraternal litigation had acquired a smattering of technical knowledge, and he perfectly well knew that the effect of this would be not only to transfer the house and lands to his brother's group, but to leave him at the mercy of that exasperated brother, who might recover from him personally every guinea he had ever received by way of rent from the date of his father's death. It was a dismal, clouded day, with something threatening in its aspect, and the darkness where he stood was made deeper by the top of one of the huge old trees overhanging the window. In a state of awful confusion, he attempted to think over his position. He placed the deed in

his pocket and nearly made up his mind to destroy it. A short time ago he would not have hesitated for a moment under such circumstances, but now his health and his nerves were shattered, and he was under a supernatural alarm which the strange discovery of this deed had powerfully confirmed. In this state of profound agitation, he heard a sniffing at the closet door, and then, an impatient scratch and long, low growl. He screwed his courage up, and not knowing what to expect, threw the door open and saw the dog, not in his dream. shape, but wriggling with joy and crouching and fawning with eager submission. And then wandering about the closet, the brute growled awfully into the corners of it, and seemed in an unappeasable agitation.

Then the dog returned and fawned and crouched again at his feet. After the first moment was over, the sensations of abhorrence and fear began to subside, and he almost reproached himself for requiting the affection of this poor friendless brute with the antipathy which he had really done nothing to earn. The dog pattered after him down the stairs. Oddly enough, the sight of this animal, after the first revulsion, reassured him. It was, in his eyes, so attached, so good-natured, and palpably so mere a dog. By the hour of evening the squire had resolved on a middle course.

He would not inform his brother of his discovery, nor yet would he destroy the deed. He would never marry, he was past that time. He would leave a letter explaining the discovery of the deed, addressed to the only surviving trustee, who had probably forgotten everything about it, and having seen out his own tenure he would provide that all should be set right after his death. Was that not fair? At all events it quite satisfied what he called his conscience,

and he thought it a devilish good compromise for his brother, and he went out towards sunset to take his usual walk. Returning in the darkening twilight, the dog, as usual attending him, began to grow frisky and wild, at first scampering round him in great circles as before, nearly at the top of his speed, his great head, between his paws as he raced. Gradually, more excited grew the pace and narrower his circuit. Louder and fiercer, his continuous growl.

And the squire stopped and grasped his stick hard, for the lurid eyes and grin of the brute threatened an attack. Turning round and round as the excited brute encircled him, and striking vainly at him with his stick, he grew at last so tired that he almost despaired of keeping him longer at bay. when on a sudden the dog stopped short and crawled up to his feet wriggling and crouching submissively. Nothing could be more apologetic and abject. And when the squire dealt him two heavy thumps with a stick, the dog whimpered only and writhed and licked his feet.

The squire sat down on a prostrate tree, and his dumb companion, recovering his wanted spirits, immediately, began to sniff and nuzzle among the roots. The squire felt in his breast pocket for the deed. It was safe. And again he pondered in this loneliest of spots on the question whether he should preserve it for restoration after his death to his brother, or destroy it forthwith. He began rather to lean toward the latter solution when the long low growl of the dog not far off startled him. He was sitting in a melancholy grove of old trees that slants gently westward, exactly the same odd effect of light I have before described. A faint red glow reflected downward from the sky, after the sun had set, now. gave to the growing darkness a lurid uncertainty. This grove, which lies in a gentle hollow, owing to its circumscribed horizon on all but one side, has a peculiar character of loneliness. He got up and peeped over a sort of barrier, accidentally formed of the trunks of felled trees laid one over the other, and saw the dog straining up the other side of it, and hideously stretched out, his ugly head looking in consequence twice the natural size. His dream was coming over him again,

and now between the trunks the brute's ungainly head was thrust, and the long neck came straining through, and the body, twining after it like a huge white lizard, and as it came striving and twisting through, it growled and glared as if it would devour him. As swiftly as his lameness would allow, the squire hurried from this solitary spot towards the house. What thoughts exactly passed through his mind as he did so, I am sure he could not have told. But when the dog came up with him, it seemed appeased, and even, and high good humor, and no longer resembled the brute that haunted his dreams. That night, near ten o'clock, the squire, a good deal agitated, sent for the keeper,

and told him that he believed the dog was mad and that he must shoot him. He might shoot the dog in the gunroom, where he was. A grain of shot or two in the wainscote did not matter, and the dog must not have a chance of getting out. The squire gave the gameskeeper his double-barreled gun, loaded with heavy shot. He did not go with him beyond the hall. He placed his hand on the keeper's arm. The keeper said his hand trembled, and that he looked as white as curds.

Listen a bit, said the squire under his breath. They heard the dog in a state of high excitement in the room, growling ominously, jumping on the window stool and down again and running round the room. Y'all need to be sharp, mind. Don't give him a chance. Slipping edgeways, do you see, and give him both barrels. Not the first my dog I've knocked over, sir,

said the man, looking very. serious as he cocked the gun. As the keeper opened the door the dog had sprung into the empty grate. He said he, never see such a stark, starring devil. The beast made a twist round as if he thought to jump up the chimney. But that wasn't to be done at no price. And he made a yell, not like a dog, like a man, caught in a mill crank. And before he could spring at the keeper, he fired one barrel into him. The dog leaped towards him and rolled over, receiving the second barrel in his head, as he lay snorting at the keeper's feet. "'I never see it like. I never heard a screech like that,' said the keeper, recoiling.

"'It makes a fellow feel queer.' "'Quite dead?' asked the squire. "'Not a stir in him, sir,' said the man, pulling him along the floor by the neck. "'Throw him outside the hall door now,' said the squire. "'And mind you pitch him outside the gate to-night. "'Old Cooper says he's a witch,' and the pale squire smiled. "'So he shan't lie in Dillingdon.' Never was a man more relieved than the squire, and he slept better for a week after this than he had done for many weeks before.

It behoves us all to act promptly on our good resolutions. There was a determined gravitation towards evil, which, if left to itself, will bear down first intentions. If at one moment of superstitious fear the squire had made up his mind to a great sacrifice and resolved in the matter of that deed so strangely recovered to act honestly by his brother, that resolution very soon gave place to the compromise with fraud, which so conveniently postponed the restitution to the period when further enjoyment on his part was impossible. Then came more tidings of Scroop's violent and menatory language,

with always the same burthen, that he would leave no stone unturned to show that there had existed a deed which Charles had either secreted or destroyed, and that he would never rest till he had hanged him. This, of course, was wild talk. At first it had only enraged him, but, with his recent guilty knowledge and suppression had come fear. His danger was the existence of the deed,

and little by little he brought himself to a resolution to destroy it. There were many falterings and recoils before he could bring himself to commit this crime. At length, however, he did it, and got rid of the custody of that which at any time might become the instrument of disgrace and ruin. There was relief in this, but also the new and terrible sense of actual guilt. He had got pretty well rid of his supernatural qualms. It was a different kind of trouble that agitated him now. But this night, he imagined, he was awakened by a violent shaking of his bed. He could see, in the very imperfect light, two figures at the foot of it, holding each bedpost.

One of these he half-fancyed was his brother's group, but the other was the old squire. Of that he was sure, and he fancied that he had shaken him up from his sleep. Squire Toby was talking as Charlie awakened, and he heard him say, Put out of our own house by you. It won't hold for long. We'll come in together, friendly, and stay. Forewarned, with your eyes open, you did it. And now scruple hang you.

We'll hang you. We'll hang you together. Look at me, you devil's limb. And the old squire tremblingly stretched his face, torn with shot and bloody, and growing every moment more and more into the likeness of the dog, and began to stretch himself out and climb the bed over the footboard. And he saw the figure at the other side, little more than a black shadow, began also to scale the bed,

and there was instantly a dreadful confusion and uproar in the room, and such a gabbling and laughing, he could not catch the words, but with a scream he woke and found himself standing on the floor. The phantoms and the clamor were gone, but a crash and ringing of fragments was in his ears, the great Chinable, from which for generations the Marstons of Jillingdon had been baptized,

had fallen from the mantelpiece, and was smashed on the hearth-stained. I've been dreaming all night about Mr. Scroop, and I wouldn't wonder old Cooper if he was dead, said the squire when he came down in the morning. God forbid, I was a-dreamed about him, too, sir. I dreamed he was damning and sicken about a hole was burnt in his coat, and the old master, God be with him, said, quite plain, I'd a swore twas himself. Cooper, get up your damned land looping thief, and lend a hand to hang him, for he's a daft cur and no dog of mine. "'Twas the dog shot over night. "'I do suppose us was running in my old head. "'I thought old master give me a punch with his knuckles

"'and says I, waken an up. "'At your service her! "'Ever a while I couldn't get it out of my head. "'Master was in the room still.' "'Letters from town soon convinced the squire "'that his brother's group, "'so far from being dead, was particularly active. "'And Charlie's attorney wrote to say in serious alarm

"'that he had heard accidentally "'that he intended setting up a case "'of a supplementary deed of stuptive. settlement of which he had secondary evidence, which would give him Jillingdon. And at this menace, handsome Charlie snapped his fingers and wrote courageously to his attorney, abiding what might follow with, however, a secret foreboding. Scroop threatened loudly now, and swore after his bitter fashion, and reiterated his old promise of hanging that cheated last. In the midst of these menaces and preparations, however,

a sudden peace proclaimed itself. Scroop died, without time even to make provisions for a posthumous attack upon his brother. It was one of those cases of disease of the heart, in which death is as sudden as by a bullet. Charlie's exultation was undisguised. It was shocking, not, of course, altogether malignant, for there was the expansion consequent on the removal of a secret fear. There was also the comic piece of luck that, only the day before Scroop had destroyed his old will, which left to a stranger every farthing he possessed, intending in a day or two to execute another to the same person, charged with the express condition of prosecuting the suit against Charlie. The result was that all his possessions went unconditionally to his brother Charles as his heir.

Here were grounds for abundance of savage elation. But there was also the deep-seated hatred of half a life of mutual and persistent aggression and revilings, and handsome Charlie was capable of nursing a grudge and enjoying a revenge with his whole heart. He would gladly have prevented his brothers being buried in the old Gillingdon Chapel, where he wished to lie. But his lawyers doubted his power, and he was not quite proof against the scandal which would attend his turning back the funeral, which would he knew be attended by some of the country gentry and others, with an erratitary regard for the Marston's. But he warned his servants that not one of them were to attend it, promising, with oaths and curses not to be disregarded, that any one of them who did so should find the door shut in his face on his return. I don't think, with the exception of old Cooper, that the servants cared for this prohibition, except as it balked a curiosity always strong in the solitude of the country.

Cooper was very much vexed that the eldest son of the old squire should be buried in the old family chapel, and no sign of decent respect from Gillingdon Hall. He asked his master whether he would not at least have some wine and refreshments in the oak parlor, in case any of the country gentlemen who paid this respect to the old family should come up to the house, But the squire only swore at him, told him to mind his own business, and ordered him to say if such a thing happened, that he was out and no preparations made and, in fact, to send them away as they came. Cooper expostulated stoutly, and the squire grew angrier, and after a tempestuous scene, took his hat and stick and walked out, just as the funeral descending the valley from the direction of the old Angel Inn came in sight. Old Cooper prowled about disconsolately, and counted the carriages as well as he could from the gate. When the funeral was over, and they began to drive away, he returned to the hall,

the door of which lay open, as usual deserted. Before he reached it, quite, a morning coach drove up, and two gentlemen in black cloaks and with crapes to their hats, got out, and without looking to the right or left, went up the steps into the house. Cooper followed them slowly. The carriage had, he supposed, gone round to the yard, for when he reached the door it was no longer there. So he followed the two mourners into the house.

In the hall he found a fellow servant, who said he had seen two gentlemen in black cloaks passed through the hall and go up the stairs without removing their hats or asking leave of anyone. This was very odd, old Cooper thought, and a great liberty, so upstairs he went to make them out. But he could not find them then, nor ever. And from that hour the house was troubled. In a little time there was not one of the servants who had not something to tell.

Steps and voices followed them sometimes in the passages, and tittering whispers, always miniatory, scared them at the corners of the galleries or from dark recesses, so that they would return panic-stricken to be rebuked by a thin Mrs. Beckett, who looked on such stories as worse than idle. But Mrs. Beckett herself, a short time after, took a very different view of the matter. She had herself begun to hear these voices, and with this formidable aggravation,

that they came always when she was at her prayers, which she had been punctual in saying all her life, and utterly interrupted them. She was scared at such moments by dropping words and sentences, which grew as she persisted into threats and blasphemies. These voices were not always in the room. They called, as she fancied, through the walls, very thick in that old house from the neighboring apartments,

sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. Sometimes they seemed to halloa from distant lobbies and came muffled, but threateningly through the long-paneled passages. As they approached, they grew furious, as if several voices were speaking together. Whenever, as I said, this worthy woman applied herself to her devotions, these horrible sentences came hurrying towards the door, and, in panic, she would start from her knees, and all then would subside except the thumping of her heart against her stays, and the dreadful tremors of her nerves. What these voices said, Mrs. Beckett could never quite remember one minute after they had ceased speaking. One sentence chased another away, jive and menace, and impious, and impious denunciations.

each hideously articulate were lost as soon as heard. And this added to the effect of these terrifying mockeries and invectives that she could not by any effort retain their exact import, although their horrible character remained vividly present to her mind. For a long time the squire seemed to be the only person in the house absolutely unconscious of these annoyances. Mrs. Beckett had twice made up her mind within the week to leave. A prudent woman, however, who has been comfortable for more than 20 years in a place,

thinks oftener than twice before she leaves it. She and old Cooper were the only servants in the house who remembered the good old housekeeping in Squire Toby's Day. The others were few, and such as could hardly be accounted regular servants. Meg Dobbs, who acted as housemaid would not sleep in the house, but walked home in trepidation to her fathers at the gatehouse, under the escort of her little brother every night. Old Mrs. Beckett, who was high and mighty with the makeshift servants of fallen Jillington,

let herself down all at once, and made Mrs. Kimes and the kitchenmaid moved their beds into her large and faded room, and there, very frankly, shared her nightly terrors with them. Old Cooper was testy and captious about these stories. He was already uncomfortable enough by reason of the entrance of the two muffled figures into the house, about which there could be no mistake. His own eyes had seen them. He refused to credit the stories of the women, and affected to think that the two mourners might have left the house and driven away, on finding no one. one to receive them. Old Cooper was summoned at night to the oak parlor, where the squire was smoking. "'I see Cooper,' said the squire, looking pale and angry. "'What for how you been frightening the crazy women with your plaguey stories? Dammy, if you see ghosts here, it's no place for

you. And it's time you should pack. I won't be left without servants. Here has been old Beckett, with the cook and kitchen-maid, as white as pipe-clay, all in a row to tell me I must have a parson to sleep among them, and preach down the devil. Upon my soul, you're a wise old body, fill in their heads with maggots, and Meg goes down to the lodge every night, I feared to lie in the house. All you're doing with your old wife's stories,

you withered old Tom of Bedlam. I'm not to blame, Master Charles. Tisn't along, no stories am I, for I'm never done telling them. It's all vanity and vapors. Mrs. Beckett will tell you that. There's been many awry word betwixt us on the head, "'but whatever I may think,' said old Cooper, significantly,

"'and looking askance with the sternness of fear in the squire's face. "'The squire averted his eyes and muttered angrily to himself "'and turned away to knock the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, "'and then turning suddenly round upon Cooper again, he spoke, "'with a pale face, but not quite so angrily as before. "'I know you're no fool, O Cooper, when you like. "'Suppose there was such a thing as a ghost here. "'Don't you see, it ain't.

"'To them snipe-headed women, it. it'd go to tell its story. What ills you, man, that you should think ought about it, but just what I think. You had a good headpiece or your own once, Cooper. Don't be you clapping a goosecap over it, as my poor father used to say. Damn it, old boy, you mustn't let them fools

be sutting one another wild with their blather, and making the folk talk what they shouldn't, about Jillingdon and the family. I don't think you'd like that, old Cooper. I'm sure you wouldn't. The woman has gone out of the kitchen, make up a bit of fire, get your pipe. I'll go to you.

when I finish this one and we'll smoke a bit together, and a glass of brandy and water. Down went the old butler, not altogether unused to such condescensions and that disorderly and lonely household, and let not those who can choose their company be too hard on the squire who couldn't. When he had got things tidy, as he said, he sat down in that big old kitchen with his feet on the fender, the kitchen candle burning in a great brass candlestick which stood on the deal table at his elbow with the brandy bottle and tumblers beside it, and Cooper's pipe also and readiness, and these preparations completed the old butler, who had remembered other generations in better times, fell into rumination, and so gradually into a deep sleep. Old Cooper was half-awakened

by someone laughing low near his head. He was dreaming of old times in the hall, and fancied one of the young gentlemen going to play him a trick, and he mumbled something in his sleep from which he was awakened by a stern, deep voice saying, You are at the funeral. I might take your life. I'll take your ear!' At the same moment the sight of his head received a violent push, and he started to his feet. The fire had gone down, and he was chilled. The candle was expiring in the socket,

and threw on the white wall long shadows that danced up and down from the ceiling to the ground, and their black outlines he fancied resembled the two men in cloaks, whom he remembered with a profound horror. He took the candle, with all the haste he could, getting along the passage on whose walls the same dance of black shadows was continued, very anxious to reach his room before the light should go out. He was startled, half out of his wits,

by the sudden clang of his master's bell close over his head, ringing furiously. "'Oh, there it goes, yes, sure enough,' said Cooper, reassuring himself with the sound of his own voice, as he hastened on, hearing more and more distinct every moment the same furious ringing. "'He's fell asleep, like me, that's it, and his light is out. I lay a fifty.' When he turned the handle of the door of the out-parlour, the squire wildly called.

Who's there? In the tone of a man who expects a robber. It's me. Old Cooper, all right, Master Charlie. You didn't come to the kitchen after all, sir. I'm very bad, Cooper. I don't know how I've been. Did you meet anything?

asked the squire. No, said the Cooper. They stared on one another. Come here. Stay here. Don't you leave me. Look round the room and say it's all right. And give us your hand, O Cooper.

For I must hold it. The Squires was damp and cold and trembled very much. It was not very far from daybreak now. After a time, he spoke again. I done many a thing I shouldn't. I'm not fit to go. And with God's blessing, I'll look to it. Why shouldn't I?

I'm as lame as old Billy. I'll never be able to do any good no more. And I'll give over drinking and marry as I ought to done a long go. None of you're fine, ladies, but a good homely wench. There is Farmer Crump's youngest, doctor. her a good loss, undiscreet. What for, shouldn't I take her? She'd take care of me.

It wouldn't bring a head full of romances here. Montuemakers' trumpery, and I'll talk with the parson, and I'll do what's fair with everyone. In mind, I said I'm sorry for anything I've done. A wild cold dawn had by this time broken. The squire, Cooper said, looked awful bad, as he got his hat and stick and sallied out for a walk instead of going to his bed,

as Cooper besought him, looking so wild and distracted, that it was plain as object was simply to escape from the house. It was twelve o'clock when the squire walked into the kitchen, where he was sure of finding some of the servants, looking as if ten years had passed over him since yesterday. He pulled a stool by the fire without speaking a word and sat down. Cooper had sent to Appleberry for the doctor, who had just arrived, but the squire would not go to him. If he wants to see me, he may come here, he muttered as often as Cooper urged him. So the doctor did come.

charley enough, and found the squire very much worse than he had expected. The squire resisted the order to get to his bed, but the doctor insisted under a threat of death at which his patient quailed. "'Well, I'll do what you say, only this. You must let old Hooper and Dickkeeper stay with me. I mustn't be left alone, and it mustn't keep awake at nights, and stay while, do you? When I get round a bit, I'll go and live in a town. It's dull living here, now that I can't do not as I used.

and I'll live a better life, mind you. You heard me say that, and I don't care who laughs, and I'll talk with the parson. I like him to laugh, hang him. It's a sign I'm doing right at last. The doctor sent a couple of nurses from the county hospital, not choosing to trust his patient to the management he had selected, and he went down himself to Jillingdon to meet them in the evening. Old Cooper was ordered to occupy the dressing room

and sit up at night which satisfied the squire, who was in a strangely excited state, very low, and threatened, the doctor said, with fever. The clergyman came, an old gentle book-learned man, and talked and prayed with him late that evening. After he had gone, the squire called the nurses to his bedside and said, There's a fellow sometimes comes. You'll never mind him. He looks in at the door and beckons. A thin humpback chap in mourning. With black gloves on, you'll know him by his lean face. As brown as the wainscot. Don't you mind his smiling. You don't go out to him, nor ask him in. He

won't stay a knot. And if he grows angered, and looks awry at you. Don't you be feared, for he can't hurt you, and he'll grow tired waiting and go away. For God's sake, mind you, don't ask him in, nor go out after him. The nurses put their heads together when this was over, and held afterwards a whispering conference with old Cooper.

Lord bless you, no, there's no madman in the house, he protested. Not a soul but what you saw. It's just a trifle of the fever in his head. No more. The squire grew worse as the night wore on. He was heavy and delirious. talking of all sorts of things, of wine and dogs and lawyers, and then he began to talk, as it were, to his brother's group.

As he did so, Mrs. Oliver, the nurse, who was sitting up alone with him, heard, as she thought, a hand softly laid on the door handle outside, and a stealthy attempt to turn it. Lord bless us, who's there! she cried, and her heart jumped in her mouth, as she thought of the hump-backed man in black who was to put in his head smiling and beckoning. Mr. Cooper, sir, are you there? She cried. Come here, Mr. Cooper, please. No, sir, quick. Old Cooper called up from his doze by the fire, stumbled in from the dressing room,

and Mrs. Oliver seized him tightly as he emerged. The man with the hump has been a try in the door, Mr. Cooper, as sure as I'm here. The squire was moaning and mumbling in his fever, understanding nothing as she spoke. No, no, Mrs. Oliver, ma'am. It's impossible if there's no such man in the house. what is Master Charlie saying?

He's saying, scroop every minute, whatever he means by that. And, and, shh, listen, there's the handle again. And with a loud scream, she added, Look at his head and neck in the door! And in her tremor, she strained old Cooper in an agonizing embrace. The candle was flaring, and there was a wavering shadow at the door that looked like the head of a man with a long neck, and a longish, sharp nose, peeping in and drawing back.

Don't be a damn fool, ma'am! cried Cooper, very white. and shaking her with all his might. It's only the condol, I tell you. Nothing in life but not, don't you see? And he raised the light. And I'm sure there was no one at the door, and I'll try if you let me go. The other nurse was asleep on a sofa,

and Mrs. Oliver called her up in a panic for company as old Cooper opened the door. There was no one near it, but at the angle of the gallery was a shadow resembling that which he had seen in the room. He raised the candle a little, and it seemed to beckon with a long hand as the head drew back. "'Shadow from the candle!' exclaimed Cooper aloud,

"'resolved not to yield to Mrs. Oliver's panic, "'and candle in hand he walked to the corner. "'There was nothing. "'He could not forbear peeping down the long gallery from this point, "'and as he moved the light he saw precisely the same sort of shadow "'a little further down, "'and as he advanced the same withdrawal and beckon. "'Gaman,' said he,

"'it is not but the candle!' "'And on he went, growing half angry and half frightened at the persistency with which this ugly shadow, a literal shadow he was sure it was, presented itself. As he drew near the point where it now appeared, it seemed to collect itself and nearly dissolve in the central panel of an old carved cabinet, which he was now approaching. And the center panel of this is a sort of boss carved into a wolf's head. The light fell oddly upon this, and the fugitive shadow seemed to be breaking up and rearranging itself as oddly. The eyeball gleamed with a point of reflected light, which glittered also.

upon the grinning mouth, and he saw the long, sharp nose of Scroop Marston, and his fierce eye, looking at him, he thought, with a steadfast meaning. Old Cooper stood gazing upon this sight, unable to move, till he saw the face, and the figure that belonged to it, began gradually to emerge from the wood. At the same time, he heard voices approaching rapidly up a side gallery in Cooper, with a loud, Lord of Mercionis! turned and ran back again, pursued by a sound that seemed to shake the old house like a mighty gust of wind. Into his master's room burst old Cooper, half-wild with fear, and clapped the door and turned the key in a twinkling,

looking as if he had been pursued by murderers. Did you hear it? whispered Cooper, now standing near the dressing-room door. They all listened, but not a sound from without disturbed the utter stillness of night. God bless us. I doubt it's my old head that's gone crazy, exclaimed Cooper. He would tell them nothing but that he was himself an old fool to be frightened by their talk and that, the rattle of a window or the drop of a pen was enough to scare him now.

And so he helped himself through that night with Brandy and sat up talking by his master's fire. The squire recovered slowly from his brain fever, but not perfectly. A very little thing the doctor said would suffice to upset him. He was not yet sufficiently strong to remove for change of scene and air, which were necessary for his complete rest of. restoration. Cooper slept in the dressing room and was now his only knightly attendant. The ways of the invalid were awed. He liked half sitting up in his bed to smoke his churchwarden a night's, and made old Cooper smoke for company at the fireside. As the squire and his humble friend indulged in it, smoking in a taciturn pleasure, and it was not until the master of Jillingdon had finished his

third pipe that he essayed conversation, and when he did the subject was not such as Cooper would have chosen. I say, old Cooper, look in my face, and don't be afeared to speak out, said the squire, looking at him with a steady, cunning smile. You know all this time as well as I do, who's in the house? You needn't deny. Hey, scruppin my father. Don't you be talking like that, Charlie, said old Cooper, rather sternly and frightened after a long silence, still looking in his face, which did not change. What's the good a shaman, Cooper? Scroops took the here and or right here, you know he did. He's looking angry. His nigh took my life with a fever, but he's not done with me yet, and he looks awful wicked. You saw him. You know you did.

Cooper was awfully frightened, and the odd smile on the squire's lips frightened him still more. He dropped his pipe and stood gazing in silence at his master, and feeling as if he were in a dream. If you think so, you should not be smiling like that, said Cooper grimly. I'm tired, Cooper. I'm tired, Cooper. it's as well to smile as to other thing, so I'll even smile while I can. You know what they mean to do with me? That's all I wanted to say. Now lad, go on with your pipe. I'm going to sleep. So the squire turned over in his bed and lay down serenely with his head on the pillow. Old Cooper looked at him and glanced at the door, and then half filled his tumbler with brandy and

drank it off, and felt better and got to his bed in the dressing room. In the dead of night he was suddenly awakened by the squire, who was standing in his dressing gown and slip by his bed. "'I've brought you a bit of present. "'I got the rents of Hazelden yesterday, "'and he'll keep that for yourself. "'It's a fitty. "'I'll give to other to Nellie Carwell tomorrow.

"'I'll sleep the sounder, and I saw a scroop since. "'He's not such a bad enough, after all, old fellow. "'He's got a crape over his face, "'for I told him I couldn't bear it, "'and I'd do money a thing for him now. "'I never could stand shilly-shally. "'Good night, old Cooper.' "'And the squire laid his trembling hand kindly on the old man's shoulder

"'and returned to his own room. I don't half like how he is. Doctor, don't come half often enough. I don't like that queer smile of his, and his hand was as cold as death. I hope in God his brain's not a-turning. With these reflections, he turned to the pleasanter subject of his present, and it last fell asleep.

In the morning, when he went into the squire's room, the squire had left his bed. Never mind he'll come back like a bad shilling, thought old Cooper, preparing the room as usual. But he did not return. Then began an uneasiness, succeeded by a panic. When it began to be plain that the squire was not in the house, what had become of him, none of his clothes but his dressing-gown and slippers were missing.

Had he left the house in his present sickly state in that garb? And if so, could he be in his right senses, and was there a chance of his surviving a cold damp night so passed in the open air? Tom Edwards was up to the house and told them that, walking a mile or so that morning at four o'clock, there being no moon, along with farmer in Oakes, who was driving his car to market in the dark. Three men walked in front of the horse, not twenty yards before them, all the way from near Gillingdon Lodge to the burial ground, the gate of which was opened for them from within,

and the three men entered and the gate was shut. Tom Edwards thought they were gone in to make preparation for a funeral of some member of the Marston family, but the occurrence seemed to Cooper, who knew there was no such thing, horribly. ominous. He now commenced a careful search, and at last bethought him of the lonely upper story in King Herod's chamber. He saw nothing changed there, but the closet door was shut, and dark as was the morning, something like a large white knot sticking out over the door caught his eye. The door resisted his efforts to open it for a time. Some great weight forced it down against the floor. At length, however, it did yield a little, and a heavy crash, shaking the whole floor.

and sending an echo flying through all the silent corridors with a sound like receding laughter, half stunned him. When he pushed open the door, his master was lying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halterwise tight round his throat and had done its work well. The body was cold and had been long dead. In due course, the coroner held his inquest and the jury pronounced that the deceased Charles Marston had died by his own hand in a state of temporary insanity. But old Cooper had his own opinion about the squire's death,

though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of his days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly old man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was known to have saved some money. End of Section 2, Squire Toby's will.

Section 3 of Madame Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheridan LaFenue. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Dickon the Devil, contributed to the Christmas number of London Society, 1872, signed. About 30 years ago, I was selected by two rich old maids to visit a property in that part of Lancashire, which lies near the famous forest of Pendle, with which Mrs. Ainsworth's Lancashire Witches had made us so pleasantly familiar.

My business was to make a little. partition of a small property, including a house and de Mezny, to which they had a long time before succeeded as co-errises. The last 40 miles of my journey I was obliged to post chiefly by crossroads, little known and less frequented, and presenting scenery often extremely interesting and pretty. The picturesqueness of the landscape was enhanced by the season, the beginning of September, at which I was traveling. I'd never been in this part of the world before. I am told it is now a great deal less wild and, consequently, less beautiful. At the inn, where I had stopped for a relay of horses and some dinner,

for it was then past five o'clock, I found the host, a hail old fellow of five and sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and garrulous benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any amount of talk, which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing on any subject you pleased. I was curious to learn something about Barwick, which was the name of the Damesnian house I was going to. As there was no inn within some miles of it I had written to the steward to put me up there

the best way he could for a night. The host of the three nuns, which was the sign under which he entertained wayfarers, had not a great deal to tell. It was twenty years or more since old squire Bose died, and no one had lived in the hall ever since, except the gardener and his wife. Tom Windsor will be as old a man as myself,

but he's a bit taller, not so much in flesh quite, said the fat innkeeper. But there were stories about the house, I repeated, that they said prevented tenants from coming into it. Oh, wife's tales, many years ago, that will be, sir. I forget him. I forget them all. Oh, yes, there always will be when a house is left so. Foolish folk will always be talking, but I hadn't heard a word about it this twenty year. It was vain trying to pump him. The old landlord of the three nuns for some reason did not choose to tell tales of Barwick Hall, if he really did, as I suspected, remember them. I paid my reckoning and resumed my journey, well-pleased with the good cheer of that old

world inn, but a little disappointed. We'd been driving for more than an hour when we began to cross a wild common, and I knew that, this past, a quarter of an hour would bring me to the door of Barwick Hall. The peat and furs were pretty soon left behind. We were again in the wooded scenery that I enjoyed so much, so entirely natural. and pretty, and so little disturbed by traffic of any kind. I was looking from the shay's window, and soon detected the object of which, for some time, my eye had been in search. Barwick Hall was a large, quaint house of that cagework fashion known as black and white, in which the bars and angles of an oak framework contrast, black as ebony, with the white

plaster that overspreads the masonry built into its interstices. This steep-roofed Elizabethan house stood in the midst of park-like grounds of no great extent, but rendered imposing by the noble stature of the old trees that now cast their lengthening shadows eastward over the sward from the declining sun. The park wall was gray with age, and in many places laden with ivy, and deep gray shadow that contrasted with the dim fires of evening reflected on the foliage above it, in a gentle hollow, stretched a lake that looked cold and black and seemed as it were to skulk from observation with a guilty knowledge. I had forgotten that there was a lake at Barwick, but the moment this caught my eye, like the cold polish of a snake in the shadow, my instinct seemed to recognize something dangerous, and I knew that the lake was connected. I could not remember how with the story I had heard of this place in my boyhood. I drove up a grass-grown avenue, under the boughs of these noble trees, whose foliage dyed in autumnal red and yellow, returned the beams of the western sun gorgeously. up at the door, I got out and had a good look at the front of the house. It was a large and melancholy

mansion, with signs of long neglect upon it. Great wooden shutters in the old-fashioned were barred outside across the windows. Grass and even nuttles were growing thick on the courtyard, and a thin moss streaked the timber beams. The plaster was discolored by time and weather, and bore great russet and yellow stains. The gloom was increased by several grand old trees that crowded close about the house. I mounted the steps and looked round. The dark lake lay near me now, a little to the left. It was not large.

It may have covered some ten or twelve acres, but it added to the melancholy of the scene. Near the center of it was a small island, with two old ash trees, leaning toward each other, their pensive images reflected in the stirless water. The only cheery influence in this scene of antiquity, solitude, and neglect

was that the house and landscape were warmed with the ruddy western beams. I knocked, and my summons resounded hollow, and ungenial in my ear, and the bell, from far away, returned a deep, mild and surly ring, as if it resented being roused from a score years' slumber. A light-limbed, jolly-looking old fellow, in a barrican jacket and gaiters, with a smile of welcome, and a very sharp red nose that seemed to promise good cheer, opened the door with a promptitude that indicated a hospitable expectation of my arrival.

There was but little light in the hall, and that little lost itself in darkness in the background. It was very spacious and lofty, with a gallery running round it, which, when the door was open, was visible at two or three points. Almost in the dark my new acquaintance led me across this wide hall into the room destined for my reception. It was spacious and wainscotted up to the ceiling. The furniture of this capacious chamber was old-fashioned and clumsy. There were curtains still to the window.

and a piece of turkey carpet lay upon the floor. Those windows were to a number, looking out through the trunks of the trees close to the house upon the lake. It needed all the fire, and all the pleasant associations of my entertainer's red nose to light up this melancholy chamber. A door at its farther end admitted to the room that was prepared for my sleeping apartment. It was wainscotted, like the other. It had a four-post bed, with heavy tapestry curtains,

and in other respects was furnished in the same old world and, ponderous style as the other room. Its window, like those of that apartment, looked out upon the lake. Sombar and sad, as these rooms were, they were yet scrupulously clean. I had nothing to complain of, but the effect was rather dispiriting. Having given some directions about supper, a pleasant incident to look forward to, and made a rapid toilet, I called on my friend with the gaiters and red nose, Tom Windsor, whose occupation was that of a bailiff, or understeward of the property to accompany me, as we had still an hour or so of sun and twilight in a walk over the grounds. It was a sweet autumn evening, and my guide, a hearty old fellow, strode at a pace

that tasked me to keep up with. Among clumps of trees at the northern boundary of the Dmesne, we had lighted upon the little antique parish church. I was looking down upon it, from an eminence, and the park wall interposed, but a little way down was a style affording access to the road, and by this we approached the iron gate of the churchyard. I saw the church door open, the sexton was replacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which he had just been digging a grave in the churchyard in their little repository under the stone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me. It was erected to commemorate the very squire bows, from whom my two old maids had

inherited the house and estate of Barwick. It spoke of him in terms of grand-delequent eulogy, and informed the Christian reader that he had died in the bosom of the Church of England at the age of 71. I read this inscription by the parting beams of the setting sun, which disappeared behind the horizon, just as we passed out from under the porch. Twenty years since the squire died, said I, reflecting as I loitered still in the churchyard. "'Why, sir, t'will be twenty-year the ninth last month.' "'And a very good old gentleman. "'Good-natured enough.

"'And an easy gentleman he was, sir. "'I don't think while he lived he ever hurt a fly,' "'acquiesced Tom Windsor. "'It ain't always easy saying what in him, though, "'and what they may take or turn afterwards, "'and some of them sort, I think, goes mad.' "'You don't think he was out of his mind?' "'I asked.

"'He, ah, no, not he, sir. A bit lazy, mayab, like other old fellows, but a new devilish well what he was about. Tom Windsor's account was a little enigmatical, but like old squire Bose, I was a bit lazy that evening and asked no more questions about him. We got over the style upon the narrow road that skirts the churchyard. It overhung by elms more than a hundred years old, and in the twilight, which now prevailed, was growing very dark. As side by side we walked along this road, hemmed in by two loose stone-like walls, something running towards us

and a zigzag line past us at a wild pace with a sound like a frightened laugh or a shudder, and I saw as it passed that it was a human figure. I may confess now that I was a little startled. The dress of this figure was in part white. I know I mistook it at first

for a white horse coming down the road at a gallop. Tom Windsor turned about and looked after the retreating figure. He'll be on his travels tonight, he said, In a low tone. Easy served with a bed, that lad be. Six foot of dry, Peter, Heath, or a nook in a dry ditch. That lad hasn't slept once in a house this twenty-year, and never will while grass grows.

Is he mad? I asked. Something that way, sir. He's an idiot. An op-y. We call him dickin the devil because the devil's almost the only word that's ever in his mouth. It struck me that this idiot was in some way connected with the story of old squire Bose. "'Queer things are told of them, I dare say,' I suggested. "'More or less, sir. More or less, queer story some.

"'Twenty years since he slept in a house. "'That's about the time the squire died,' I continued. "'So it will be, sir, not very long after.' "'You must tell me all about that, Tom, tonight, "'when I can hear it comfortably after supper. "'Tom did not seem to lack my invitation, "'and looking straight before him as we trudged on, "'he said, you see, sir, the house has been quiet,

and naught's been troubling folk inside the walls are out, all around the woods of Barwick, this ten year or more. And my old woman down there is clear against talking about such matters, and thinks it best, and so do I, to let sleeping dogs be. He dropped his voice towards the close of the sentence, and nodded significantly. We soon reached a point where he unlocked a wicked in the park wall, by which we entered the grounds of Barwick once more. The twilight deepening over the landscape, the huge solemn trees, and the distant outlines, the haunted house exercised a sombre influence on me, which, together with the fatigue of a day of travel and the brisk walk we had had, disinclined me to interrupt the silence in which my companion now indulged. A certain air of comparative comfort on our arrival, in great measure dissipated the

gloom that was stealing over me. Although it was by no means a cold night, I was very glad to see some wood-blazing in the grate, and a pair of candles aiding in the light of the fire made the room look cheerful. A small table with a very white cloth and preparations for supper was also a very agreeable object. I should have liked very well under these influences to have listened to Tom Windsor's story, but after supper I grew too sleepy to attempt to lead him to the subject, and after yawning for a time I found there was no use and contending against my drowsiness, so I betook myself to my bedroom, and by ten o'clock was fast asleep. What interruption I experienced that night I shall tell you presently. It was not much, but it was very odd. By next night I had completed my work at

Barwick. From early morning till then I was so incessantly occupied and hard-worked that I had no time to think over the singular occurrence to which I had just referred. Behold me, however, at length once more seated at my little supper table, having ended a comfortable meal. It had been a sultry day, and I had thrown one of the large windows up as high as it would go. I was sitting near it with my brandy and water at my elbow, looking out into the dark. There was no moon, and the trees that are grouped about the house make the darkness round it supernaturally profound on such nights. Tom, said I, so soon as the jug of hot punch I had supplied him with, began to exercise its genial and communicative influence. You must tell me who, besides your wife and you and myself, slept in the house last night.

Tom, sitting near the door, set down his tumbler and looked at me askance, while you might count to seven without speaking a word. Who else slept in the house? He repeated very deliberately. Not a living soul, sir. And he looked hard at me, still evidently expecting something more. That is very odd, I said returning his stare and feeling really a little odd. You are sure you were not in my room last night. "'Not till I came to call you, sir, this morning.

"'I can make oath of that.' "'Well,' said I, "'there was someone there. "'I can make oath of that. "'I was so tired I could not make up my mind to get up, "'but I was waked by a sound that I thought "'was someone flinging down the two tin boxes "'in which my papers were locked up violently on the floor.

"'I heard a slow step on the ground, "'and there was light in the room, "'although I remember having put out my candle. "'I thought it must have been you who had come in for my clothes and upset the boxes by accident. Whoever it was, he went out, and the light went with him. I was about to settle again when the curtain being a little open at the foot of the bed, I saw a light on the wall opposite, such as a candle from outside would cast if the door were very cautiously opening. I started up in the bed, drew the side curtain, and saw that the door

was opening, and admitting light from outside. It is close, you know, to the head of the bed. A hand was holding on the edge of the door and pushing it open, not a bit like yours, a very singular hand. Let me look at yours. He extended it for my inspection. Oh, no, there's nothing wrong with your hand. This was differently shaped, fatter, and the middle finger was stunted, and shorter than the rest, looking as if it had once been broken, and the nail was crooked like a claw. I called out, Who's there?

And the light and the hand were withdrawn, and I saw and heard no more of my visitor. "'So sure as you're a living man, that was him!' exclaimed Tom Windsor, "'his very nose, growing pale, his eyes almost starting out of his head. "'Who?' I asked. "'Old Squire, Boes, twas his hand you saw, the Lord a mercy on us?' answered Tom. "'The broken finger, and the nail bent like a hoop. "'Well, for you, sir, he didn't come back when you called that time. "'You came here about them, Miss Dimmick's business,

"'and he never meant they should have a foot of ground in Barwick, and he was making a will to give it away quite different when death took him short. He never was uncivil to no one, but he couldn't abide them, ladies. My mind misgave me when I heard twas about their business, you are coming. And now, you see how it is. He'll be at his old tricks again. With some pressure and a little more punch, I induced Tom Windsor to explain his mysterious illusions by recounting the occurrences which followed the old squire's death.

Squire bows of Barwick died without making a will, as you know. said Tom, and all the folk round were sorry, that is to say, sir, a sorry's folk will be for an old man that has seen a long tale of years, and has no right to grumble that death has knocked an hour too soon at his door. The squire was well liked. He was never in a passion, or said a hard word, and he would not hurt a fly, and that made what happened after his decease the more surprising. The first thing these ladies did when they got the property was to buy stock for the park. It was not wise in any case to graze the land on their own account. but they little knew all they had to contend with. Before long, something went wrong in the cattle, first one and then another, took sick and died, and so on, till the loss began to grow heavy.

Then queer stories, little by little, began to be told. It was said, first by one, then by another, that Squirebose was seen about evening time walking, just as he used to do when he was alive, among the old trees, leaning on a stick, and sometimes when he came up with the cattle, he would stop and lay his hand kindly like on the back of one of them, and that one was sure to fall sick next day and die soon after.

No one ever met him in the park, or in the woods, or ever saw him, except a good distance off. But they knew his gait and his figure well, and the clothes he used to wear, and they could tell the beast he laid his hand on by its color, white, done, or black, and that beast was sure to sicken and die. The neighbours grew shy of taking the path over the park And no one liked to walk in the woods Or come inside the bounds of Barwick And the cattle went on sickening and dying as before At that time there was one Thomas Pike He had been a groom to the old squire

And he was in care of the place And was the only one that used to sleep in the house Tom was vexed hearing these stories Which he did not believe the half on him And more especially is he could not get man or boy To herd the cattle All being afeared So he wrote to Mattluck

in Derbyshire for his brother, Richard Pike, a clever lad, and one that knew not of the story of the old squire walking. Dick came, and the cattle was better. Folks said they could still see the old squire sometimes walking as before in openings of the wood, with a stick in his hand, but he was shy a come and nigh the cattle, whatever's reason might be since Dick and Pike came, and he used to stand a long bit off looking at them, with no more stirring him than a trunk of one of them old trees, for an hour at a time till the shape melted away little by little, like the smoke of a fire that burns out. Tom Pike and his brother Dickon,

being the only living souls in the house, lay in the big bed in the servants' room, the house being fast barred and locked one night in November. Tom was lying next to the wall, and he told me as wide awake as ever he was at noonday. His brother Dickon lay outside and was sound asleep. Well, as Tom lay thinking,

with his eyes turned toward the door. It opened slowly, and who should come in but old squire bows, his face looking as dead as he was, his coffin. Tom's very breath left his body. He could not take his eyes off him, and he felt the hair rising up on his head. The squire came to the side of the bed and put his arms under Dickon, and lifted the boy, in a dead sleep all the time, and carried him out, so at the door. Such was the appearance to Tom Pike's eyes, and he was ready to swear to it anywhere.

When this happened, the light, wherever it came from, all in a sudden went out, and Tom could not see his own hand before him. More dead than alive he lay till daylight. Sure enough his brother Dickon was gone. No sign of him could he discover about the house, and with some trouble he got a couple of the neighbors to help him to search the woods and grounds, not a sign of him anywhere. At last one of them thought of the island in the lake. The little boat was moored to the old post at the water's edge. In the got, though with small hope of finding him there. Find him nevertheless they did, sitting under the big ash tree, quite out of his wits. and all their questions he answered nothing but one cry.

Bow's the devil! See him! See him! Bo's the devil! An idiot they found him, and so he will be till God sets all things right. No one could ever get him to sleep under the roof tree more. He wanders from house to house while daylight lasts, and no one cares to lock the harmless creature in the workhouse, and folk would rather not meet him after nightfall, for they think where he is there may be worse things near. A silence followed Tom Stee.

story. He and I were alone in that large room. I was sitting near the open window, looking into the dark night air. I fancied I saw something white move across it, and I heard a sound like low talking that swelled into a discordant shriek. "'Who-hoo! Bow's the devil! Over your shoulder! I started up and saw by the light of the candle with which Tom strode to the window the wild eyes and blighted face of the idiot. As with a sudden change of mood, he drew off, whispering and tittering to himself, and holding up his long fingers and looking at the tips like a hand of glory. Tom pulled down the window. The story in its epilogue were over. I confess, I was rather glad when I heard the sound of the horse's hoofs on the courtyard a few minutes later, and still gladder

when, having bidden Tom a kind farewell, I had left the neglected house of Barwick a mile behind me. End of Section 3. Dicken the Devil. Section 4 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery By J. Sheridan Lefanou. This Libervox recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. The Child That Went with the Ferrys, anonymous in all the year round, 186970. Readers of Carmilla in a glass darkly will recognize the Negro woman in the couch.

Eastward of the Old City of Limerick, about ten Irish miles of, under the range of mountains known as the Slevelim hills, famous as having afforded Sarsfield, a shelter among their rocks and hollows, when he crossed them in his gallant descent upon the cannon, an ammunition of King William, on its way to the beleaguering army, there runs a very old and narrow road. It connects the Limerick Road to Tipperary, with the old road from Limerick to Dublin,

and runs by bog and pasture, hill and hollow, straw-thatched village, and roofless castle, not far from twenty miles. skirting the heathy mountains of which i have spoken at one part it becomes singularly lovely for more than three irish miles it traverses a deserted country a wide black bog level as a lake skirted with copse spreads at the left as you journey northward in the long and irregular line of mountain rises at the right Clothed in heath, broken with lines of gray rock that resemble the bold and irregular outlines of fortifications, and riven with many a gully, expanding here and there into rocky and wooden glens which open as they approach the road. A scanty pasturage, on which browsed a few scattered sheep or kine, skirts this solitary road for some miles, and under shelter of a hillock, and of two or three great ash trees, stood, not many years ago,

the little thatched cabin of a widow named Mary Ryan. Poor was this widow in a land of poverty. The thatch had acquired the gray tint and sunken outlines that show how the alternations of rain and sun have told upon that perishable shelter. But whatever other dangers threatened, there was one well provided against by the care of other times. Round the cabin stood half a dozen mountain ashes,

as the Rowans, inimical to witches, are there called. On the worn planks of the door were nailed two horseshoes, and over the lintel and spreading along the that thatch grew luxuriant patches of that ancient cure for many maladies, and prophylactic against the machinations of the evil one, the house leak. Descending into the doorway, in the chiaroscuro of the interior, when your eye grew sufficiently accustomed to that dim light, you might discover, hanging at the head of the widow's wooden roofed bed, her beads and a file of holy water. Here certainly were defenses and bulwarks against the intrusion of that unearthly and evil power, of whose vicinity the solitary family were constantly reminded by the outline of Liz Navura, that lonely hill-hunt of the good people, as the fairies are called euphemistically, who strangely dome-like summit rose not half a mile away, looking like an outwork of the long line of mountain that sweeps by it.

It was at the fall of the leaf, and an autumnal sunset through the lengthening shadow, of haunted Liz Navora, close in front of the solitary little cabin, over the undulating slopes and sides of Slevelim. The birds were singing among the branches and the thinning leaves of the melancholy ash trees that grew at the roadside in front of the door. The widows' three younger children were playing on the road, and their voices mingled with the evening song of the birds. Their elder sister Nell was within in the house, as their phrase is, seeing after the boiling of the potatoes for supper. Their mother had gone down to the bog to carry up a hamper of turf on her back. It is, or was at least, a charitable custom, and if not disused, long may it continue,

for the wealthier people when cutting their turf and stacking it in the bog to make a smaller stack for the behoof of the poor, who were welcome to take from it so long as it lasted. And thus the potato pot was kept boiling, and the hearth warm that would have been cold enough but for that good-natured bounty through wintry months. Molly Ryan trudged up the steep Boharine, whose banks were overgrown with thorn and brambles, and stooping under her burden, re-entered her house, where her dark-haired daughter, Nell, met her with a welcome, and relieved her ryan looked round with a sigh of relief, and drying her forehead, uttered the monster ejaculation. Ah, wish, it's tired, I am with it, God bless it. And where's the craters, Nell?

They're not on the road, mother. Didn't you see them? And you're coming up? "'No, there was no one before me on the road,' she said uneasily. "'Not a soul, Nell, and why didn't she keep an eye on them?' "'Well, they're in the haggard playing there, or round by the back of the house. "'Will I call the men?' "'Do so good girl, in the name of God. "'The hins is coming home, see, and the sun was just down over Nacadula and I coming up.' "'So I out ran tall, dark-haired, Nell, and standing on the road, looked up and down it,

but not a sign of her two little brothers, Khan and Bill, or her little sister Pegg, could she see. She called them, but no answer came from the little haggard, fenced with straggling bushes. She listened, but the sound of their voices was missing. Over the stile, and behind the house she ran, but there all was silent and deserted. She looked down toward the bog, as far as she could see, but they did not appear.

Again she listened, but in vain. At first she had felt angry. But now a different feeling overcame her, and she grew pale. With an undefined boating, she looked toward the heathy boss of Liz Navora, now darkening into the deepest purple against the flaming sky of sunset. Again she listened with a sinking heart, and heard nothing but the farewell twitter and whistle of the birds and the bushes around. How many stories had she listened to by the winter hearth of children stolen by the fairies,

at nightfall in lonely places? With this fear, she knew her mother was haunted. No one in the country round gathered her little flock about her so early as this frightened widow, and no door in the seven parishes was barred so early. Sufficiently fearful, as all young people in that part of the world are of such dreaded and subtle agents, Nell was even more than usually afraid of them, for her tremors were infected and redoubled by her mothers. She was looking toward Liz Navora in a trance of fear, and crossed herself again and again, and whispered prayer after prayer.

She was interrupted by her mother's voice on the road, calling her loudly. She answered and ran round to the front of the cabin where she found her standing. And where in the world's the craithers? Did you see sight of them anywhere? cried Mrs. Ryan as the girl came over the style. Arrah, mother, tis only what they're run down the road a bit. We'll see them this minute coming back. It's like goats they are, climbing here and running there. And if I had them here in my hand, maybe I wouldn't give them a hiding all round.

May the Lord forgive you, Nell. The children's gone. There took, and not a soul near us. And Father Tom, three miles away, and what'll I do, or who's to help this night? Oh, where's through, where's through, the crathers is gone? Wished, mother, be easy, don't you see them coming up? And then she shouted in menacing accents, waving her arm, and beckoning the children, who were seen approaching on the road, which some little way off made a slight dip, which had concealed them.

They were approaching from the westward and from the direction of the dreaded hills. of Liz Navora. But there were only two of the children, and one of them, the little girl, was crying. Their mother and sister hurried forward to meet them, more alarmed than ever. Where is Billy? Where is he? cried the mother, nearly breathless, so soon as she was within hearing. He's gone. They took him away, but they said he'll come back again, answered Little Con, with the dark brown hair. He's gone away with the grand ladies, blubbered the little girl. What ladies? Where? Oh, loom. I'm a son. "'Thora, my darling, are you going away at last?

"'Where is he? Who took him? "'What ladies are you talking about? What way did he go?' "'She cried in distraction. "'I couldn't see where he went, Mother. "'Twas like as if he was going to Liz Navora.' With a wild exclamation, the distracted woman ran on towards the hill alone, clapping her hands and crying aloud the name of her lost child.

Scared and horrified Nell, not daring to follow, gazed after her and burst into tears, and the other children raised high their lamentations and shrill rivalry. Twilight was deepening. It was long past the time when they were usually barred securely within their habitation. Nell led the younger children into the cabin and made them sit down by the turf fire while she stood in the open door, watching in great fear for the return of her mother. After a long while they did see their mother return.

She came in and sat down by the fire and cried as if her heart would break. Will I bar the door, mother? asked Nell. I do. didn't I lose enough this night Without leaving the door open For more it is to go But first take and sprinkle the dust Of the holy waters over you

Aquishla And bring it here till I throw a taste of It over myself and crithers And I wonder Nell, you'd forget to do it like yourself Letting the crothers out so near nightfall Come here and sit on my knees, Astora Come to me, Mavornin

And hold me fast in the name of God And I'll hold you fast that non can take you from me, and tell me all about it and what it was, the Lord between us and harm, and how it happened, and who was in it. And the door being barred, the two children, sometimes speaking together,

often interrupting one another, often interrupted by their mother, managed to tell the strange story which I had better relate connectedly, and in my own language. The widow Rhine's three children were playing, as I've said, upon the narrow old road in front of her door. Little Bill, or Loom,

about five years old, with golden hair and large blue eyes, was a very pretty boy with all the clear tints of healthy childhood. And that gaze of earnest simplicity which belongs not to town children of the same age, his little sister Pegg about a year elder and his brother Con, a little more than a year elder than she, made up the little group. Under the great old ash trees, whose last leaves were falling at their feet in the light of an October sunset,

they were playing with the hilarity and eagerness of rustic children, clamoring together in their faces were turned toward the west and storied hill of Liz and Nibora. Suddenly a startling voice with a screech called to them from behind, ordering them to get out of the way and turning they saw a sight such as they never beheld before. It was a carriage drawn by four horses that were pawing and snorting in impatience, as if just pulled up. The children were almost under their feet and scrambling to the side of the road next to their own door. This carriage, and all its appointments, were old-fashioned and gorgeous, and presented to the children, who had never seen anything finer than a turf car, and at once an old chaise that passed that way from Killaloo, a spectacle perfectly dazzling. Here was antique splendor. The harness and trappings were scarlet and blazing with gold. The horses were huge in snow-white with great manes, that as they tossed and shook them in the air, seemed to stream and float sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, like so much smoke. their tails were long and tied up in bows of broad scarlet and gold ribbon.

The coach itself was glowing with colors, gilded and emblazoned. There were footmen in gay liveries and three cocked hats like the coachman's, but he had a great wig, like a judges, and their hair was frizzed out and powdered, and a long thick pig-tail with a bow to it hung down the back of each. All these servants were diminutive and ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous horses of the equipage, and how much of the equipage, had sharp sallow features and small, restless, fiery eyes and faces of cunning and malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was scowling and showing his white fangs under his cocked

hat, and his little blazing beads of eyes were quivering with fury in their sockets as he whirled his whip round and round over their heads, to the lash of it looked like a streak of fire in the evening sun, and sounded like the cry of a legion of Philip Whoix in the air. "'Stop the princess on the highway!' cried the coachman in a piercing treble. "'Stop the princess on the highway!' "'Piped each footman in turn, scowling over his shoulder down on the children "'and grinding his keen teeth. "'The children were so frightened that they could only gape and turn white in their panic,

"'but a very sweet voice from the open window of the carriage reassured them "'and arrested the attack of the lackeys. "'A beautiful and very grand-looking lady was smiling from it on them, "'and they all felt pleased in the strange, light of that smile. The boy with the golden hair, I think, said the lady, bending her large and wonderful clear eyes on little loom. The upper sides of the carriage were chiefly of glass, so that the children could see another woman inside, whom they did not like so well. This was a black woman, with a wonderfully

long neck, hung round with many strings of large, variously colored beads, and on her head was a sort of turban of silk, striped with all the colors of the rainbow, and fixed in it was a golden star. This black woman had a face as thin almost as a death's head, with high cheekbones and great goggle eyes, the whites of which, as well as her wide range of teeth, showed in brilliant contrast with her skin as she looked over the beautiful lady's shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Yes, the boy with the golden hair, I think, repeated the lady. And her voice sounded sweet as a silver bell in the children's ears, and her smile beguiled them like the light of an enchanted lamp, as she leaned from the window with a look of ineffable fondness on the golden-haired boy,

with the large blue eyes, insomuch that little Billy, looking up, smiled in return with a wondering fondness. And when she stooped down and stretched her jeweled arms towards him, he stretched his little hands up, and how they touched the other children did not know, but saying, "'Come and give me a kiss, my darling,' she raised him, and he seemed to ascend in her small fingers as lightly as a feather. And she held him in her lap and covered him with kisses. Nothing daunted.

The other children would have been only too happy to change places with their favored little brother. There was only one thing that was unpleasant, and a little frightened them, and that was the black woman who stood and stretched forward in the carriage as before. She gathered a rich silk and gold handkerchief that was in her fingers up to her lips, and seemed to thrust ever so much of it, fold after fold, into her capacious mouth, as they thought to smother her laughter, with which she seemed convulsed, for she was shaking and quivering as it seemed with suppressed merriment.

But her eyes, which remained uncovered, looked angrier than they had ever seen eyes look before. But the lady was so beautiful, they looked on her instead, and she continued to caress and kiss the little boy on her knee, and smiling at the other children she held up a large russet apple in her fingers, and the carriage began to move slowly on, and with a nod inviting them to take the fruit, she dropped it on the road from the window. It rolled some way beside the wheels, they following,

and then she dropped another, and then another, and so on. And the same thing happened to all, for just as either of the children who ran beside had caught the rolling apple, somehow it slipped into a hole or ran into a ditch, and looking up they saw the lady drop another from the window. And so the chase was taken up and continued till they got, hardly knowing how far they had gone, to the old crossroad that leads to Aouni.

It seemed that there the horse's hoofs and carriage wheels rolled up a wonderful dust, which being caught in one of those eddies that whirl the dust up into a column on the calmest day, enveloped the children for a moment, and passed whirling on towards Liz Navora. The carriage, as they fancied, driving in the center of it. But suddenly it subsided. The straws and leaves floated to the ground. The dust dissipated itself. But the white horses and the lackeys, the gilded carriage, the lady in their little

golden-haired brother were gone. At the same moment suddenly the upper rim of the clear setting sun disappeared behind the hill of Nakdula, and it was twilight. Each child felt the transition like a shock and the sight of the rounded summit of Liz Navora, now closely overhanging them, struck them with a new fear. They screamed their brother's name after him, but their cries were lost in the vacant air. At the same time, they thought they heard a hollow voice say, close to them, Go home.

Looking round and seeing no one they were scared and hand in hand, the little girl crying wildly and the boy white as ashes from fear. They trotted homeward, at their best speed to tell, as we have seen, their strange story. Molly Ryan never more saw her darling, but something of the lost little boy was seen by his former playmates. Sometimes when their mother was away earning a trifle at haymaking, and Nellie washing the potatoes for their dinner, or beetling clothes in the little stream that flows in the hollow close by.

They saw the pretty face of little Billy, peeping in archly at the door, and smiling silently at them. And as they ran to embrace him with cries of delight, he drew back, still smiling archly, and when they got out into the open day, he was gone, and they could see no trace of him anywhere. This happened often, with slight variations in the circumstances of the visit. Sometimes he would peep for a longer time, sometimes for a shorter time. sometimes for a shorter time. Sometimes his little hand would come in, and, with a bended finger, beckoned them to follow.

But always he was smiling, with the same arched look and wary silence, and always he was gone when they reached the door. Gradually these visits grew less and less frequent, and in about eight months they ceased altogether. And little Billy, irretrievably lost, took rank in their memories with the dead. one wintry morning nearly a year and a half after his disappearance,

their mother, having set out for limerick soon after cockcrow to sell some fowls at the market, the little girl lying by the side of her elder sister, who was fast asleep, just as the gray of the morning, heard the latch lifted softly, and saw little Billy enter and close the door gently after him. There was light enough to see that he was barefoot and ragged and looked pale and famished. He went straight to the fire and cowered over the turf embers and rubbed his hand, and slowly, and seemed to shiver as he gathered the smoldering turf together. The little girl clutched her sister in terror and whispered,

Waken, Nellie, Waken, here's Billy come back. Nellie slept soundly on, but the little boy, whose hands were extended close over the coals, turned and looked toward the bed. It seemed to her in fear, and she saw the glare of the embers reflected on his thin cheek as he turned toward her. He rose and went on tiptoe, quickly to the door in silence, and let himself out as softly as he had come in. After that, the little boy was never seen any more by any one of his kindred.

Fairy doctors, as the dealers and the preternatural, who in such cases were called in, are termed, did all that in them lay. But in vain, Father Tom came down and tried what holier rights could do, but equally without result, so little Billy was dead to mother, brother, and sisters, but no grave received him. Others whom affection cherished lay in holy ground In the old churchyard of Abingdon With headstone to mark the spot

Over which the survivor might kneel And say a kind prayer for the peace of the departed soul But there was no landmark to show Where Little Billy was hidden from their loving eyes Unless it was in the old hill of Liz Navora That cast its long shadow at sunset before the cabin door Or that white and filmy In the moonlight in later years would occupy his brother's game

as he returned from fair or market and draw from him a sigh and a prayer for the little brother he had lost so long ago and was never to see again end of section four the child that went with the fairies section five of madame kraal's ghost and other tales of mystery by j sheridan la fanu this librivox recordings in the public domain read by ben tucker the white cat of drum gunnial Anonymous in all the year-round 1869-70. There is a famous story of a white cat with which we all become acquainted in the nursery. I'm going to tell a story of a white cat very different from the amiable and enchanted princess who took the disguise for a season. The white cat of which I speak was a more sinister animal. The traveler from Limerick toward Dublin, after passing the hills of Killaloe upon the left, as Keeper Mountain rises high in view, finds himself gradually him,

in up the right by a range of lower hills, an undulating plain that dips gradually to a lower level than that of the road interposes, and some scattered hedgerows relieve its somewhat wild and melancholy character. One of the few human habitations that send up their films of turf smoke from that lonely plain is the loosely-thatched, earth-built dwelling of a strong farmer, as the more prosperous of the tenant farming classes are termed in Munster. It stands in a clump of trees near the edge of a wandering stream, about halfway between the mountains and the Dublin Road, and had been for generations tenanted by people named Donovan. In a distant place, desirous of studying some Irish records which had fallen into my hands, and inquiring for a teacher capable of instructing me in the Irish language, a Mr. Donovan, dreamy, harmless, and learned, was recommended to me for the purpose. I found that he had been educated as a Caesar in Trinity College Dublin.

He now supported himself by teaching, and the special direction of my studies, I suppose, flattered his national partialities, for he unbosomed himself of much of his long-reserved thoughts and recollections about his country in his early days. It was he who told me this story, and I mean to repeat it as nearly as I can in his own words. I have myself seen the old farmhouse with its orchard of huge moss-grown apple trees. I have looked round on the peculiar landscape, the roofless, ivied tower, that 200 years before, had afforded a refuge from raid and rapporte, and which still occupied its old place in the angle of the haggard. The bush-grown lists that scarcely 150 steps away records the labors of a bygone race, the dark and towering outline of old keeper in the background.

And the lonely range of furs and heath-clad hills that form a nearer barrier, with many a line of gray rock and clump of dwarf oak or birch, the pervading sense of loneliness made it a scene not unsuited for a wild and unearthly story. And I could quite fancy how, seen in the gray of a wintry morning, shrouded far and wide in snow, or in the melancholy glory of an autumnal sunset, or in the chill splendor of a moonlight night, it might be able to be in the melancholy, or in the chill splendor of a moonlight night. might have helped to tone a dreamy mind like honest Dan Donovan's to superstition and a proneness to the illusions of fancy. It is certain, however, that I never anywhere met with a more simple-minded creature, or one on whose good faith I could more entirely rely. When I was a boy, said he, living at home at Drumgunniel, I used to take my goldsmith's Roman history in my hand and go down to my favorite seat, the flat stone, sheltered by a hawthorn tree beside the little low. a large and deep pool, such as I have heard, called a tarn in England.

It lay in the gentle hollow of a field that is overhung toward the north by the old orchard, and being a deserted place was favorable to my studious quietude. One day reading here, as usual, I wearied at last and began to look about me, thinking of the heroic scenes I had just been reading of. I was as wide awake as I am at this moment, and I saw a woman appear at the corner of the orchard and walk down the slope. She wore a long, light gray dress, so long that it seemed to sweep the grass behind her, and so singular was her appearance in a part of the world where female attire is so inflexibly fixed by

custom, that I could not take my eyes off her. Her course lay diagonally from corner to corner of the field, which was a large one, and she pursued it without swerving. When she came near I could see that her feet were bare, and that she seemed to be looking steadfastly upon some remote object. for guidance. Her route would have crossed me, had the Tarn not interposed, about ten or twelve yards below the point at which I was sitting. But instead of arresting her course at the margin of the Lao, as I had expected, she went on without seeming conscious of its existence. And I saw her, as plainly as I see you, sir, walk across the surface of the water and pass, without seeming to see me, at about the distance I'd calculated. I was ready to faint from sheer terror.

I was only 13 years old then, and I remember every particular as if it had happened this hour. The figure passed through the gap at the far corner of the field, and there I lost sight of it. I had hardly strength to walk home and was so nervous and ultimately so ill, that for three weeks I was confined to the house, and could not bear to be alone for a moment. I never entered that field again. Such was the horror with which from that moment every object in it was closed. Even at this distance of time I should not like to pass through it. This apparition I connected with a mysterious event, and also with a singular liability that has for nearly eight years distinguished, or rather afflicted, our family.

It is no fancy. Everybody in that part of the country knows all about it. Everybody connected with what I had seen with it. I will tell it all to you as well as I can. When I was about fourteen years old, that is about a year after the sight I had seen in the Lao field, we were one night expecting my father home from the fair of Killalough. My mother sat up to welcome him home and I with her, for I liked nothing better than such a vigil. My brothers and sisters and the farm servants,

except the men who were driving home the cattle from the fair, were asleep in their beds. My mother and I were sitting in the chimney corner chatting together and watching my father's supper, which was kept hot over the fire. We knew that he would return before the men who were driving home the cattle, for he was riding, and told us that he would only wait to see them fairly on the road and then push homeward.

At length we heard his voice in the knocking of his loaded whip at the door, and my mother let him in. I don't think I ever saw my father drunk, which is more than most men of my age, from the same part of the country, could say of theirs, but he could drink his glass of whiskey as well as another, and he usually came home from fair or market a little merry and mellow, and with a jolly flush in his cheeks. Tonight he looked sunken, pale, and sad.

he entered with the saddle and bridle in his hand, and he dropped them against the wall near the door, and put his arm round his wife's neck, and kissed her kindly. "'Welcome home, mihal,' said she, kissing him heartily. "'God bless you, Maverneen,' he answered, and hugged her again. He turned to see me who was plucking him by the hand, jealous of his notice. I was little in light of my age, and he lifted me up in his arms and kissed me. And my arms being about his neck, he said to my mother, "'Draw the ball to Kuselah.'

She did so, and, setting me down very dejectedly, he walked to the fire and sat down on a stool, and stretched his feet toward the glowing turf, leaning with his hands on his knees. "'Rouse up, MacDarland,' said my mother, who was growing anxious, "'and tell me how did the cattle sell, and did everything go lucky at the fair, or is there anything wrong with the landlord, or what in the world is it, that ails you, Mick Jewel?' "'Nothing, Molly. The cows sold well, thank God, and there's nothing to fill out between me and the landlord, and everything's the same way. "'There's no fault to find anywhere.'

"'Well, then, Mickey, since, so it is, turn round to your hot supper and ate it, "'and tell us, is there anything new?' "'I got my supper, Molly, on the way, and I can't eat a bit,' he answered. "'Got your supper on the way, and you knowin' twas waiting for you at home, "'and your wife sitting up and all,' cried my mother reproachfully. "'You're taking a wrong meaning out of what I say,' said my father. "'There's something happened that leaves me that I can't eat a mouthful, "'and I'll not be dark with you, Molly, for maybe it is.

ain't long I have to be here, and I'll tell you what it was. It's what I've seen, the white cat. "'The Lord between us on harm,' exclaimed my mother in a moment as pale and as chap fallen as my father. And then trying to rally with a laugh, she said, "'Hah, tis is only fun in me you are. Sure, a white rabbit was snared Sunday last in Grady's Wood, and Tick seen a big white rat in the haggard yesterday. "'Twas neither rot nor rabbit was in it. Don't you think, but, I'd know a rat or a rabbit from a big white cat with a green eyes as big as half-pennies, and its back riz up like a bridge trotting on about me, and ready, if I d'ar stop, to rub its sides

against my shins, and maybe to make a jump and seize my throat, if that it's a cat at all, and not something worse. As he ended his description in a low tone, looking straight at the fire, my father drew his big hand across his forehead once or twice, his face being damp and shining with the moisture of fear, and he sighed, or rather, groaned heavily. My mother had relapsed into panic and was praying again in her fear. I, too, was terribly frightened, and on the point of crying, for I knew all about the white cat.

Clapping my father on the shoulder, by way of encouragement, my mother leaned over him, kissing him, and at last began to cry. He was wringing her hands in his and seemed in great trouble. There was nothing came into the house with me, he asked, in a very low tone, turning to me. There was nothing, father. I said, but the saddle and bridle that was in your hand. Nothing white came in the door with me, he repeated. Nothing at all, I answered. So best, said my father, and making the sign of the cross, he began mumbling to himself,

and I knew he was saying his prayers. Waiting for a while to give him time for this exercise, my mother asked him where he first saw it. When I was riding up to Boherian, the Irish turn meaning a little road such as leads up to a farmhouse, I bethought to myself that the men was on the road with the cattle And no one to look into the horse barn myself So I thought I might as well leave him in the crooked field below

And I tuck him there He being cool and not a hair turned For I rode him easy all the way It was when I turned after letting him go The saddle and bridle being in my hand That I saw it pushing out over the long grass In the side of the path And it walked across it in front of me

And then back again before me the same way and sometimes at one side and then another, looking at me with them shining eyes. And I conceded I heard it growling as it kept beside me, as close as you ever see, till I came up the door here, and knocked and called as you heard me. Now, what was it, and so simple an incident

that agitated my father, my mother, myself, and finally every member of this rustic household with a terrible foreboding. It was this that we, one and all, believed that my father had received in thus encountering the white, cat, a warning of his approaching death. The omen had never failed hitherto. It did not fail now. In a week after my father took the fever that was going, and before a month he was dead. My honest friend,

Dan Donovan, paused here. I could perceive that he was praying for his lips were busy, and I concluded that it was for the repose of that departed soul. In a little while he resumed. It is 80 years now since that omen first attached to my family. Eighty years, "'I, is it. Ninety is nearer the mark, and I've spoken to many old people in those earlier times "'who had a distinct recollection of everything connected with it. It happened in this way. "'My grand-uncle, Connor Donovan, had the old farm of Drung Gunniel in his day. "'He was richer than ever my father was, or my father's father either, for he took a short lease of "'Balragone and made money of it. But money won't soften a hard heart, and I'm afraid my

grand-uncle was a cruel man, a profligate man he was, surely, and that is mostly a cruel man at heart. He drank his share, too, and cursed and swore, when he was vexed, more than was good for his soul, I'm afraid. At that time there was a beautiful girl of the Coleman's up in the mountains, not far from Capricullen. I'm told there are no Coleman's there now at all, and that family has passed away. The famine years made great changes. Ellen Coleman was her name. The Coleman's were not rich, but being such a beauty she might have made a good match. Worse than she did for herself, poor thing, she could not. Khan Donovan, my grand-uncle, God forgive him,

sometimes in his rambles saw her affairs or patterns, and he fell in love with her, as who might not. He used her ill, he promised her marriage, and persuaded her to come away with him, and after all he broke his word. It was just the old story. He tired of her, and he wanted to push himself in the world, and he married a girl of the colopies

that had a great fortune, 24 cows, 70 sheep, and 120 goats. He married this merry colopee, and grew richer than before, and Ellen Coleman died broken-hearted, but that did not trouble the strong farmer much. He would have liked to have children, but he had none, and this was the only cross he had to bear, for everything else went much as he wished.

One night he was returning from the fair at Nenau. A shallow stream at that time crossed the road. They have thrown a bridge over it, I am told, sometimes since, and its channel was often dry in summer weather. When it was so, as it passes close by the old farmhouse of John Gunniel, without a great deal of winding, it makes a sort of road, which people then used as a shortcut to reach the house by. Into this dry channel, as there was plenty of light from the moon,

my grand-uncle turned his horse, and when he had reached the two ash trees at the mirroring of the farm, he turned his horse short into the river-field, intending to ride through the gap at the other end under the oak tree. and so he would have been within a few hundred yards of his door. As he approached the gap he saw, or thought he saw, with a slow motion, gliding along the ground toward the same point, and now and then when the soft bound, a white object, which he described as being no bigger than his hat.

But what it was he could not see, as it moved along the hedge and disappeared at the point to which he was himself tending. When he reached the gap, the horse stopped short. He urged and coaxed it in vain. he got down to lead it through, but it recoiled, snorted, and fell into a wild, trembling fit. He mounted it again, but its terror continued, and it obstinately resisted his caresses and his whip. It was bright moonlight, and my grand uncle was chafed by the horse's resistance, and, seeing nothing to account for it, and being so near home, what little patience he possessed forsook him, and, plying his whip in spur and earnest,

he broke into oaths and curses. All on a sudden the horse spring through, and Con Donovan, as he passed under the broad branch of the oak, saw clearly a woman standing on the bank beside him. Her arm extended, with the hand of which as he flew by, she struck him a blow upon the shoulders. It threw him forward upon the neck of the horse, which in wild terror reached the door at a gallop and stood there quivering and steaming all over. Less alive than dead my grand-uncle got in. He told his story, at least, so much as he chose. his wife did not quite know what to think but that something very bad had happened she could not doubt

he was very faint and ill and begged that the priest should be sent for forthwith when they were getting him to his bed they saw distinctly the marks of five finger points on the flesh of his shoulder where the spectral blow had fallen these singular marks which they said resembled in tint the hue of a body struck by lightning remained imprinted on his flesh and were buried with him

when he had recovered sufficiently to talk with the people about him, speaking like a man at his last hour from a burdened heart and troubled conscience, he repeated his story, but said he did not see, or, at all events, know the face of the figure that stood in the gap. No one believed him. He told more about it to the priest than to the others. He certainly had a secret to tell. He might as well have divulged it, frankly, for the neighbors all knew well enough

that it was the face of dead Ellen Coleman that he had seen. From that moment my grand uncle never raised his head. He was a scared, silent, broken, spirited man. It was early summer then, at the fall of the leaf in the same year, he died. Of course, there was a wake, such as besiemed, a strong farmer so rich as he. For some reason, the arrangements of this ceremonial were a little different from the usual routine. The usual practice is to place the body in the great room or kitchen, as it is called, of the house. In this particular case, there was, as a little bit of the room.

I told you for some reason, an unusual arrangement. The body was placed in a small room that opened upon the greater one. The door of this during the wake stood open. There were candles about the bed, and pipes and tobacco on the table, and stools for such guests as chose to enter, the door standing open for their reception. The body, having been laid out, was left alone in this smaller room during the preparations for the wake. After nightfall, one of the women approaching the bed to get a chair which she had left near it, rushed from the room with a scream, and, having recovered her speech at the further end of the kitchen, and surrounded by a gaping audience, she said at last, "'May I never sin if his face may it rise up against the back of the bed, and he's staring down

to the door with eyes his biggest pewter plates, that it'd be shining in the moon.' "'Are a woman, he's a cracked yard,' said one of the farm boys as they are termed being men of any age you please. "'Ah, Molly, don't be talking, woman. "'Tis what you can say to-day going into the dark room, out of the light. "'Why didn't you take a candle in your fingers? "'You're old madame,' said one of her female companions. "'Condel or no candle, I seen it,' insisted Molly.

"'And what's more, I could almost take my oath I seen his arm too, "'stretching out of the bed along the floor, "'three times as long as it should be to take hold of me a bit of foot.' "'Nonsense, you fool. What did he want all your foot?' exclaimed one scornfully. "'Germere me a condo, some of yeas, in the name of God,' said O Sal Doolin. That was straight and lean, and a woman that could pray like a priest almost. Give her a candle, agreed all.

But whatever they might say, there wasn't one among them that did not look pale and stern enough as they followed Mrs. Doolin, who was praying as fast as her lips could patter, and leading the van with a tallow candle held like a taper in her fingers. The door was half open as the pan. Annic-stricken girl had left it, and holding the candle on high the better to examine the room, she made a step or so into it. If my grand-uncle's hand had been stretched along the floor in the unnatural way described, he had drawn it back again under the sheet that covered him.

And tall Mrs. Doolin was in no danger of tripping over his arm as she entered, but she had not gone more than a step or two with her candle aloft, when, with a drowning face she suddenly stopped short, staring at the bed which was now fully in view. Lord bless us, Mrs. Dolan, Mom, come back, said the woman next to her, who had fast hold of her dress or her coat, as they called it, and drawing her backwards with a frightened pluck, while a general recoil among her followers betokened the alarm which her hesitation had inspired. Wished well, yes, said the leader, peremptorily, I can't hear my own ears with the noise you're making. On which of years let the cotton hear, and whose cot is it? She asked, peering suspiciously at a white. cat that was sitting on the breast of the corpse. Put it away, well he is, she resumed with horror at the profanation.

Many a corpter's eyes stretched and crossed in the bed. The likes of that I've never seen yet. The man in the house would a brute bust like that mounted on him, like a fouca. Lord forgive me for name and the like in this room. Drive it away, some of years. Out of that this minute, I'll tell you. Each repeated the order, but no one seemed inclined to execute it. They were crossing themselves and whispering their country.

conjectures and misgivings as to the nature of the beast, which was no cat of that house, nor one that they had ever seen before. On a sudden, the white cat placed itself on the pillow over the head of the body, and having from that place glared for a time at them over the features of the corpse, it crept softly along the body towards them, growling low and fiercely as it drew near. Out of the room they bounced in dreadful confusion, shutting the door fast after them, and not for good while did the heartiest venture to peep in again. The white cat was sitting in its old place on the dead man's breast, but this time it crept quietly down the side of the bed and disappeared under it, the sheet which was spread like a coverlet, and hung down nearly to the floor, concealing it from view.

Praying, crossing themselves, and not forgetting a sprinkling of holy water, they peeped and finally searched, poking spades, wottles, pitchforks, and such implements under the bed. But the cat was not to be found, and they concluded that it had made its escape among their feet as they stood. near the threshold. So they secured the door carefully, with hasp and padlock, but when the door was open next morning they found the white cat sitting, as if it had never been disturbed, upon the breast of the dead man. Again occurred very nearly the same scene with a like result, only that some said they saw the cat afterwards lurking under a big box in a corner of the outer room where my grand-nuckle kept his leases and papers and his prayer-book and beads. Mrs. Doolin heard it growling in her heels wherever she went.

And although she could not see it, she could hear it spring on the back of her chair when she sat down and growl in her ear, so that she would bounce up with a scream and a prayer, fancying that it was on the point of taking her by the throat. And the priest's boy, looking round the corner, under the branches of the old orchard, saw a white cat sitting under the little window of the room where my grand-uncle was laid out, and looking up at the four small panes of glass as a cat will watch a bird. The end of it was that the cat was found on the corpse again, when the room was visited, and do what they might.

Whenever the body was left alone, the cat was found again, in the same ill-omened contiguous contiguous with the dead man, and this continued to the scandal and fear of the neighborhood until the door was opened finally for the wake. My grand-uncle being dead, and, with all due solemnities, buried, I have done with him, but not quite yet with the white cat. No banshee ever yet was more inalienably attached to a family

than this ominous apparition is to mine. But there is this difference. The banshee seems to be animated with an affectionate sympathy with the bereaved family to whom it is hereditarily attached, whereas this thing has about it a suspicion of malice. It is the messenger simply of death, and it's taking the shape of a cat, the coldest, and they say the most vindict,

of brutes is indicative of the spirit of its visit. When my grandfather's death was near, although he seemed quite well at the time, it appeared not exactly, but very nearly in the same way in which I told you it showed itself to my father. The day before my Uncle Teague was killed by the bursting of his gun, it appeared to him in the evening, at twilight, by the Lao, in the field where I saw the woman who walked across the water, as I told you. My uncle was washing the barrel of his gun in the lough. The grass is short there, and there is no cover near it. He did not know how it approached. But the first he saw of it, the white cat was walking close round his feet in the twilight, with an angry twist of its tail, and a green glare in its eyes,

and do what he would. It continued walking round and round him. In larger or smaller circles till he reached the orchard, and there he lost it. My poor Aunt Pegg, she married one of the O'Brien's, near Ula, came to Drumgunneal to go to the funeral of a cousin who died about a mile away. She died herself, poor woman, only a month after. Coming from the wake at two or three o'clock in the morning, as she got over the style and through the farm of Drum Gunniel,

she saw the white cat at her side, and it kept close beside her. She ready to faint all the time, till she reached the door of the house, where it made a spring up into the white thorn tree that grows close by, and so it parted from her. And my little brother Jim saw it also, just three weeks before he died. Every member of our family who dies or takes his death sickness at Drum Gunnyol is sure to see the white cat, and no one of us who sees it need hope for long life after. End of Section 5, the White Cat of Drum Gunnyol.

Section 6 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by Jay Sheridan LaFanoe. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. An account of some strange disservances in Anger Street. Anonymous in the Dublin University magazine, 1853. It is an anticipation of Mr. Justice Harbottle, who may be found in a glass darkly. It is not worth telling the story of mine, at least not worth writing.

Told indeed, as I have sometimes been called upon to tell it, to a circle of intelligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside and all snug and cozy within, it has gone off, though I say it, who should not, indifferent well. But it is a venture to do as you would have me. Pin, ink, and paper are cold vehicles for the marvelous, and a reader decidedly a more critical animal than a listener.

If, however, you can induce your friends to read it after nightfall, and when the fireside talk is run for a while on thrilling tales of shapeless terror, In short, if you will secure me the Moliatimpora Fandi, I will go to my work and save my say with better heart. Well, then, these conditions presupposed, I shall waste no more words but tell you simply how it all happened. My cousin, Tom Ludlow, and I studied medicine together. I think he would have succeeded had he stuck to the profession. But he preferred the church, poor fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble discharge of his duties. For my present purpose, I say a number.

of his character when I mentioned that he was of a sedate but frank and cheerful nature, very exact in his observance of truth, and not by any means like myself, of an excitable or nervous temperament. My uncle Ludlow, Tom's father, while we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in Angers Street, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and Tom proposed that we should take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet. A move which would accomplish, the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture rooms and to our amusements, and over-leaving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings.

Our furniture was very scant, our whole equipage remarkably modest and primitive, and, in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Our new plan was therefore executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it and tom the back-bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to unlawed. occupy. The house, to begin with, was a very old one. It had been, I believe, newly fronted about 50 years before, but with this exception, it had nothing modern about it. The agent who bought it

and looked into the titles from my uncle told me that it was sold, along with much other forfeited property at Chichester House, I think, in 1702, and had belonged to Sir Thomas Hackett, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in James Second's time. How old it was then, I can't say, But at all events, it had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all that mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions. There had been very little done in the way of modernizing details, and perhaps it was better so, for there was something queer and bygone in the very walls and ceilings, in the shape of doors and windows, and the odd diagonal sight of the chimney pieces,

in the beams and ponderous cornices, not to mention the singular solidity of the, all the woodwork, from the banisters to the window frames which hopelessly defied disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish. An effort had indeed been made to the extent of papering the drawing-rooms, but somehow the paper looked raw and out of keeping, and the old woman who kept a little dirt pie of a shop in the lane and whose daughter, a girl of two and fifty, was our solitary handmaid coming in at sunrise and chastly receding again as soon as she had made all ready for tea in our state apartment. This woman, I say, remembered it when old Judge Horrocks, who having earned the

reputation of a particularly hanging judge, ended by hanging himself, as the coroner's jury found under an impulse of temporary insanity, with a child skipping rope over the massive old banisters, resided there entertaining good company, with fine venison and rare old port. In those halcyon days, the drawing rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were wainscotted, but the front one was not gloomy, and in it the coziness of antiquity quite overcame its somber associations. But the back bedroom, with its two queerly placed melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghostly

closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber and dissolved the partition. At nighttime, this alcove, as our maid was want to call it, had in my eyes a specially sinister and suggestive character. Tom's distinct and solitary candle glimmered vainly in its darkness. There, it was always overlooking him, always itself impenetrable. But this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I can't tell how, repulsive to me. There was, I suppose, in its proportions and features a latent discord, a certain mysterious and indescribable relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting in the safe, and raised indefinable suspicions and apprehensions of the imagination. On the whole, as I began by saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone in it. I had never pretended to conceal from poor Tom my superstitious weakness, and he, on the other hand, most unaffectedly ridiculed my tremors. The skeptic was, however, destined to receive a lesson, as you shall hear. We had not been very long in occupation of our respective dormitories when I began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no means prone to nightmares. It was now, however,

my destiny, instead of enjoying my customary repose every night to sup full of horrors. After a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful dreams, my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me, at least on an average every second night in the week. Now this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion, which you please, of which I was the most miserable sport was on this wise. I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness, although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. Well, while in this

clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited the monotonous tableau of horror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably became I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed. And uniformly, with the same effect, a sense of dreadful anticipation always took slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid, but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some unknown agency for my torment,

and after an interval, which always seemed to me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up to the window, where it remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture thus mysteriously glued to the window panes was the portrait of an old man, in a crimson-flowered silk dressing gown, the folds of which I could now describe with a countenance embodying a strange mixture of intellect,

sensuality, and power, but with all sinister and full of malignant omen. His nose was hooked like the beak of a vulture, His eyes, large, gray, and prominent, and lighted up with a more than normal cruelty and coldness. These features were surmounted by a crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well, I remember every line, hue, and shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may. The gaze of this hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination

of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. At last, the cock he crew, and away then flew, the fiend who had enslaved me through the awful watches of the night, and harassed and nervous I rose to the duties of the day. I had, I can't say exactly why, but it may have been from the exquisite anguish and profound impressions of unearthly horror with which this strange phantasmagoria was associated, an insurmountable antipathy to describe the exact nature of my nightly troubles to my friend and comrade. Generally, however, I told him that I was haunted by abominable dreams, and true to the imputed materialism of medicine, we put our heads together to dispel my horrors, not by exorcism, but by a tonic. I will do this tonic justice, and frankly admit that the

accursed portrait began to intermit its visits under its influence. What of that? Was this singular apparition as full of character, as of terror, therefore the creature of my fancy or the invention of my poor stomach? Was it, in short, subjective to borrow the technical sling of the day? And not the palpable aggression and intrusion of an external agent. That good friend, as we will both admit, by no means follows. The evil spirit, who enthralled my senses and the shape of the of that portrait may have been just as near me, just as energetic, just as malignant, though I saw him not. What means the whole moral code of revealed religion regarding the due keeping of our own bodies, soberness, temperance, etc? Here is an obvious connection between the material and the

invisible, the healthy tone of the system, and its impaired energy may, for aught we can tell, guard us against influences which would otherwise render life itself terrific. The mesmerist, and the electro-biologist, will fail upon an average with nine patients out of ten. So may the evil spirit. Special conditions of the corporeal system are indispensable to the production of certain spiritual phenomena. The operation succeeds sometimes, sometimes fails. That is all. I found afterwards that my would-be skeptical companion had his troubles, too.

But of these I knew nothing yet. One night, for a wonder, I was sleeping soundly, when I was roused by a step on the lobby outside my room, followed by the loud clang of what turned out to be a large brass candlestick, flung with all his force by poor Tom Ludlow over the banisters, and rattling with a rebound down the second flight of stairs, and almost concurrently with this, Tom burst open my door and bounced into my room backwards

in a state of extraordinary agitation. I had jumped out of bed and clutched him by the arm before I had any distinct idea of my own whereabouts. There we were, in our shirts, standing before the open door, staring through the great old banister opposite at the lobby window through which the sickly light of a clouded moon was gleaming. What's the matter, Tom? What's the matter with you? What the devil's the matter with you, Tom? I demanded shaking him with a nervous impatience. He took a long breath before he answered me, and then it was not very coherently. It's nothing, nothing at all. Did I speak? What did I say? Where's the candle, Richard? It's dark. I had a candle. Yes, dark enough, I said. But what's the matter? What is it?

Why don't you speak, Tom? Have you lost your wits? What is the matter? The matter? Oh, it is all over. It must have been a dream. Nothing at all but a dream. Don't you think so? It could not have been anything more than a dream. Of course, said I, feeling uncommonly nervous. It was a dream. I thought, he said, there was a man in my room, and I jumped out of bed, and where's the candle? "'In your room, most likely,' I said. "'Shall I go and bring it?' "'No, stay here. Don't go. It's no matter. Don't. I tell you. It was all a dream.

"'Balt the door, Dick. I'll stay here with you. I feel nervous. "'So, Dick, like a good fellow, light your candle and open the window. I am in a shocking state.' I did as he asked me, enrobing himself like Granuel in one of my blankets, he seated himself close beside my bed. everybody knows how contagious is fear of all sorts, but more especially that particular kind of fear under which poor Tom was at that moment laboring.

I would not have heard, nor, I believe, would he have recapitulated just at that moment for half the world the details of the hideous vision which had so unmanned him. Don't mind telling me anything about your nonsensical dream, Tom, said I, affecting contempt, really in a panic. Let us talk about something else, but it is quite plain that this dirty old house

disagrees with us both. And hang me if I stay here any longer to be pestered with indigestion and bad nights, so we may as well look out for lodgings. Don't you think so? At once? Tom agreed, and after an interval, said, I have been thinking, Richard, that it is a long time since I saw my father, and I have made up my mind to go down tomorrow and return in a day or two, and you can take rooms for us in the meantime. I fancied that this resolution, obviously the result of of the vision which had so profoundly scared him would probably vanish next morning with the damps and shadows of night, but I was mistaken. Off went Tom at peep of day to the country, having agreed that so soon as I had secured

suitable lodgings, I was to recall him by letter from his visit to my Uncle Ludlow. Now, anxious as I was to change my quarters, it so happened, owing to a series of petty procrastinations and accidents, that nearly a week elapsed before my bargain was made in my letter of recall on the wing to Tom, and in the meantime a trifling adventure or two had occurred to your humble servant, which, absurd as they now appear, diminished by distance, did certainly at the time served to wet my appetite for change considerably. A night or two, after the departure of my comrade, I was sitting by my bedroom fire, the door locked in the ingredients of a tumbler of hot whiskey punch upon the crazy spider table, for as the best mode of keeping the black spirits in

white, blue spirits and gray, with which I was environed at bay. I had adopted the practice recommended by the wisdom of my ancestors and kept my spirits up by pouring spirits down. I had thrown aside my volume of anatomy and was treating myself by way of a tonic, preparatory to my punch and bed, to half a dozen pages of the spectator, when I heard a step on the flight of stairs descending from the attics. It was two o'clock, and the streets were as silent as a churchyard, The sounds were, therefore, perfectly distinct. There was a slow, heavy tread, characterized by the emphasis and deliberation of age, descending by the narrow staircase from above,

and what made the sound more singular, it was plain that the feet which produced it were perfectly bare, measuring the descent with something between a pound and a flop, very ugly to hear. I knew quite well that my attendant had gone away many hours before, and that nobody but myself had any business in the house. It was quite plain also that the person who was coming downstairs had no intention whatever of concealing his movements.

But on the contrary, appeared disposed to make even more noise and proceed more deliberately than was at all necessary. When the step reached the foot of the stairs outside my room, it seemed to stop. And I expected every moment to see my door open spontaneously and give admission to the original of my detested portrait. I was, however, relieved in a few seconds by hearing the descent renewed, just in the same manner, upon the staircase leading down to the drawing-rooms,

and thence, after another pause, down the next flight, and so on to the hall, whence I heard no more. Now, by the time this sound had ceased, I was wound up, as they say, to a very unpleasant pitch of excitement. I listened, but there was not a stir. I screwed up my courage to a decisive experiment, opened my door, and in a stentorian voice, bawled over the banisters, Who's there? There was no answer but the ringing of my own voice through the empty old house. No renewal of the movement. Nothing, in short, to give my unpleasant sensations a definite direction.

There is, I think, something most disagreeably disenchanting in the sound of one's own voice under such circumstances, exerted in solitude and in vain. It redoubled my sense of isolation, and my misgivings increased on perceiving that the door, which I certainly thought I had left open, was closed behind me, in a vague alarm, lest my retreat should be cut off. I got again into my room as quickly as I could,

where I remained in a state of imaginary blockade, and very uncomfortable indeed, to morning. Next night brought no return of my barefooted fellow lodger, but the night following, being in my bed, bed and in the dark, somewhere, I suppose, about the same hours before. I distinctly heard the old fellow again descending from the garrets. This time I had had my punch, and the morale of the garrison was consequently excellent. I jumped out of bed, clutched the poker as I passed the expiring fire, and in a moment was upon the lobby. The sound had ceased by this time. The dark and chill were

discouraging, and guess my horror when I saw, or thought I saw, a black monster. Whether in the shape of a man or a bear, I could not say, standing with its back to the wall on the lobby facing me, with a pair of great greenish eyes shining dimly out. Now, I must be frank and confess that the cupboard which displayed our plates and cups stood just there, though at that moment I did not recollect it. At the same time I must honestly say that making every allowance for an excited imagination, I never could satisfy myself that I was made the dupe of my own fancy in this matter, for this apparition after one or two shiftings of shape, as if in the act of incipient transformation, began, as it seemed on second

thoughts, to advance upon me in its original form. From an instinct of terror, rather than of courage, I hurled the poker with all my force at its head, and to the music of a horrid crash made my way into my room and double-locked the door. Then in a minute more I heard the horrid bare feet walk down the stairs till the sound ceased in the hall, as on the former occasion. If the apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had at all events the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true fancy phrase,

knocked its two daylights into one, as the commingled fragments of my tea service testified. I did my best to gather comfort and courage from these evidences, but it would not do. And then what could I say of those horrid bare feet, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, which measured the distance of the entire staircase through the solitude of my haunted dwelling?

and, at an hour when no good influence was stirring, confounded, the whole affair was abominable, and was out of spirits and dreaded the approach of night. It came, ushered ominously in with a thunderstorm and dull torrents of depressing rain. Earlier than usual the streets grew silent, and by twelve o'clock nothing but the comfortless pattering of the rain was to be heard. I made myself as snug as I could. I lighted two candles instead of one.

I foreswore bed, and held my own. myself in readiness for a sally, candle in hand, for kuk-ki-kut. I was resolved to see the being, if visible at all, who troubled the nightly stillness of my mansion. I was fidgety and nervous and tried in vain to interest myself with my books. I walked up and down my room, whistling and turn martial and hilarious music, and listening ever in anon for the dreaded noise. I sat down and stared at the square label on the solemn and reserved-looking black bottle until Flanagan and Company's best old malt whiskey grew into a sort of subdued accompaniment to all the fantastic and horrible speculations

which chased one another through my brain. Silence, meanwhile, grew more silent and darkness darker. I listened in vain for the rumble of a vehicle, or the dull clamor of a distant row. There was nothing but the sound of a rising wind which had succeeded the thunderstorm that had traveled over the Dublin Mountains quite out of hearing. In the middle of this great city I began to feel myself alone with nature, and heaven knows what beside. My courage was ebbing.

Punch, however, which makes beasts of so many, made a man of me again, just in time to hear, with tolerable nerve and firmness, the lumpy, flabby, naked feet, deliberately descending the stairs again. I took a candle, not without a tremor. As I crossed the floor I tried to examine. extemporize a prayer but stopped short to listen and never finished it. The steps continued. I confess I hesitated for some seconds at the door before I took heart of grace and opened it. When I peeped

out, the lobby was perfectly empty. There was no monsters standing on the staircase, and as the detested sound ceased, I was reassured enough to venture forward nearly to the banisters. Horror of horrors. Within a stair or two beneath the spot where I stood, the unearthly tread smote the floor. My eye caught something in motion. It was about the size of Goliath's foot. It was gray, heavy, and flapped with a dead weight from one step to another. As I am alive, it was the most monstrous gray rat I ever beheld or imagined. Shakespeare says, Some men there are cannot abide a gaping pig, and some that are mad if they behold a cat. I went well nigh out of my wits when I beheld this rat, for laugh at me as you may,

it fixed upon me, I thought a perfectly human expression of malice. And as it shuffled about and looked up into my face almost from between my feet, I saw, I could swear it. I felt it then, and know it now, the infernal gaze and the accursed countenance of my old friend in the portrait, transfused into the visage of the bloated vermin before me. I bounced into my room again with a feeling of loathing and horror I cannot describe, and locked and bolted my door as if a lion had been at the other side. Damn him or it. Curse the portrait and its original. I felt in my soul that the rat, yes, the rat, I had just seen, was that evil being in masquerade, and rambling through the house upon some infernal night lark.

Next morning I was early trudging through the miry streets, and among other transactions posted a peremptory note recalling Tom. On my return, however, I found a note from my absent chum announcing his intended return next day. I was doubly rejoiced at this because I had succeeded in getting rooms, and because the change of scene and return of my comrade were rendered especially pleasant by the last night's half-radiculous, half-horrible adventure. I slept extemporaneously in my new quarters and Digstreet that night, and next morning returned for breakfast to the haunted mansion, where I was certain Tom would call immediately on his arrival.

I was quite right, he came, and almost his first question referred to the primary object of our change of residence. Thank God. he said with genuine fervor on hearing that all was arranged. On your account, I am delighted. As to myself, I assure you that no earthly consideration could have induced me ever again to pass a night in this disastrous old house. Confound the house, I ejaculated with a genuine mixture of fear and detestation. We have not had a pleasant hour since we came to live here.

And so I went on and related incidentally my adventure with the plethoric old rat. Well, if that were all, said my cousin, affecting to my cousin. to make light of the matter, I don't think I should have minded it very much. Aye, but it's I, it's countenance, my dear Tom, urged I. If you had seen that, you would have felt it might be anything but what it seemed. I inclined to think the best conjurer in such a case would be an able-bodied cat, he said with a provoking chuckle. But let us hear your own adventure, I said tartly. At this challenge he looked uneasily round him.

I had poked up a very unpleasant recollection. You shall hear it, Dick, I'll tell it to you, he said. Big ad, sir, I should feel quite queer, though, telling it here, though we are too strong a body for ghosts to meddle with just now. Though we spoke this like a joke, I think it was serious calculation. Our heeb was in a corner of the room, packing our cracked Delph tea and dinner services in a basket. She soon suspended operations,

and with mouth and eyes wide open, became an absorbed, listener. Tom's experiences were told in nearly these words. I saw it three times, Dick. Three distinct times, and I'm perfectly capable. It meant me some infernal harm. I was, I say, in danger, in extreme danger, for, if nothing else had happened, my reason would most certainly have failed me unless I had escaped so soon. Thank God I did escape. The first night of this hateful disturbance, I was lying in the attitude of sleep in that lumbering old bed. I hate to think of it. I was really wide awake, though I had put out my candle and was lying as quietly as if I had been asleep.

And although accidentally restless, my thoughts were running in a cheerful and agreeable channel. I think it must have been two o'clock at least when I thought I heard a sound in that, that odious, dark recess at the far end of the room. It was as if someone was drawing a piece of cord slowly along the floor, lifting it up and dropping it softly down again in coils. I stayed up once or twice in my bed, but could see nothing, so I could see nothing, so. I concluded that it must be mice in the wainscot. I felt no emotion graver than curiosity, and after a few minutes ceased to observe it. While lying in this state, strange to say,

without at first a suspicion of anything supernatural, on a sudden I saw an old man, rather stout and square in a sort of roan red dressing gown and with a black cap on his head, moving stiffly and slowly in a diagonal direction from the recess, across the floor of the bedroom, passing my bed at the foot and entering the lumber closet at the left. He had something under his arm, his head hung a little at one side, and, merciful God, when I saw his face, Tom stopped for a while and then said, That awful countenance, which, living or dying, I never can forget,

disclosed what he was. Without turning to the right or left, he passed beside me and entered the closet by the bed's head. While this fearful and indescribable type of death and guilt was passing, I felt that I had no more power to speak or stir than if I had been myself a corpse. For hours after it had disappeared, I was too terrified and weak to move. As soon as daylight came, I took courage and examined the room, and especially the course which the frightful intruder had seemed to take,

but there was not a vestige to indicate anybody's having passed there. No sign of any disturbing agency visible among the lumber that strewed the floor of the clock, I now began to recover a little. I was fagged and exhausted, and at last overpowered by a feverish sleep I came down late, and finding you out of spirits on account of your dreams about the portrait whose original, I am now certain, disclosed himself to me. I did not care to talk about the infernal vision. In fact, I was trying to persuade myself that the whole thing was an illusion, and I did not like to revive in their intensity the hated impressions of the past night, or to risk the constancy of my skepticism by recounting the tale of my sufferings.

It required some nerve I can tell you to go to my haunted chamber next night and lie down quietly in the same bed, continued Tom. I did so with a degree of trepidation, which I am not ashamed to say. Very little matter would have sufficed to stimulate to downright panic. This night, however, passed off quietly enough and also the next, and so too did two or three more. I grew more confident and began to fancy that I believed in the theories of spectral illusions with which I had at first vainly tried to impose upon my convictions.

The apparition had been, indeed, altogether, anomalous. It had crossed the room without any recognition of my presence. I had not disturbed it, and it had no mission to me. What then was the imaginable use, it's crossing the room, in a visible shape at all? Of course, it might have been in the closet instead of going there, as easily as it introduced itself into the recess without entering the chamber in a shape discernible by the senses. Besides, how the deuce had I seen it. It was a dark night. I had no candle. There was no fire. And yet I saw it as distinctly, in coloring an outline as ever I beheld human form. A cataleptic dream would explain it all, and I was determined that a dream it should be. One of the most remarkable phenomena

connected with the practice of mendacity is the vast number of deliberate lies we tell ourselves, whom, of all persons we can least expect to deceive. And all this, I need hardly tell you, Dick, I was simply lying to myself, and did not believe one word of the wretched humbug. Yet I went on, as men will do, like persevering charlatans and impostors, who tire people into credulity by the mere force of reiteration. So I hoped to win myself over at last to a comfortable skepticism about the ghost. He had not appeared a second time. That certainly was a comfort, and what, after all, did I care for him in his queer old toggery and strange looks? not a fig. I was nothing the worst for having seen him, and a good story the better. So I tumbled into bed,

put out my candle, and cheered by a loud drunken quarrel in the back lane, went fast asleep. From this deep slumber I awoke with a start. I knew I had a horrible dream, but what it was I could not remember. My heart was thumping furiously. I felt bewildered and feverish. I stayed up in bed and looked about the room. A broad flood of moonlight came in through the curtainless window. Everything was as I had last seen it, and though the domestic squabble in the back lane was unhappily for me allayed, I yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing on his way home, the then-popular comic ditty called Murphy Delaney. Taking advantage of this diversion, I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, enclosing my eyes did my best to think of nothing else but the song,

which was every moment growing fainter in the distance. "'Twas Murphy Delaney so funny and Friskey stepped into a she-beam shop to get his skin full, He reeled out again pretty well lined with whiskey As fresh as a shamrock as blind as a bull The singer whose condition, I dare say, resembled that of his hero, was soon too far off to regale my ears anymore And as his music died away, I myself sank into a doze, Neither sound nor refreshing.

Somehow the song had got into my head, And I went meandering on through the adventures of my respectable fellow countrymen, who, on emerging from the she-bean shop, fell into a river from which he was fished up to be sat upon. by a coroner's jury, who having learned from a horse doctor that he was dead as a doorknail, so there was an end, returned their verdict accordingly, just as he returned to his senses, when an angry altercation in a pitched battle between the body and the coroner winds up the lay with due spirit and pleasantry. Through this ballad, I continued with a wary monotony to plod down to the very last line and then

de Capo and so on in my uncomfortable half-sleep. For how long I can't conjecture. I found myself at last, however, muttering, Dad is a door now, so there was an end. And something like another voice within me seemed to say very faintly but sharply. Dad, Dad, Dad! And may the Lord have mercy on your soul! And instantaneously I was wide awake

and staring right before me from the pillow. Now, will you believe it, Dick? I saw the same accursed figure standing full front and gazing at me with its stony and fiendish countenance, not two yards from the bedside. Tom stopped here and wiped the perspiration from his face. I felt very queer.

The girl was as pale as Tom, and assembled as we were in the very scene of these adventures, we were all, I dare say, equally grateful for the clear daylight and the resuming bustle out of doors. For about three seconds only I saw it plainly. Then it grew indistinct. But for a long time, there was something like a column of dark vapor where it had been standing between me and the wall.

and I felt sure that he was still there. After a good while this appearance went too. I took my clothes downstairs to the hall and dressed there, with the door half open, then went out into the street and walked about the town till morning, when I came back in a miserable state of nervousness and exhaustion. I was such a fool dick as to be ashamed to tell you how it came to be so upset. I thought you would laugh at me,

especially as I'd always talk philosophy and treated your ghosts with contempt. I concluded you would give me no quarter and so kept my tale of horror to myself. Now, Dick, you will hardly believe me when I assure you that, for many nights after this last experience, I did not go to my room at all. I used to sit up for a while in the drawing room after you had gone up to your bed, and then steal down softly to the hall door, let myself out and sit in the Robin Hood Tavern until the last guest went off, and then I got through the night like a century, pacing the streets to morning.

For more than a week I had never slept in bed. I sometimes had a snooze on a form in the Robin Hood, and sometimes a nap in a chair during the day, but regular sleep I had absolutely none. I was quite resolved that we should get into another house, but I cannot bring myself to tell you the reason, and I somehow put it off from day to day. Although my life was during every hour of this procrastination rendered as miserable as that of a felon when the constable's on his track, I was growing absolutely ill from this wretched mode of life. One afternoon I determined to enjoy an hour's sleep upon your bed. I hated mine, so that I had never except in a stealthy visit every day to unmake it, lest Martha should discover the secret of my nightly absence, entered the ill-omened chamber. As ill-luck would have it, you had locked your bedroom and taken away the key.

I went into my own to unsettle the bedclothes, as usual, and give the bed the appearance of having been slept in. Now a variety of circumstances concurred to bring about the dreadful scene Through which I was that night to pass In the first place I was literally overpowered with fatigue And longing for sleep In the next place the effects of this extreme exhaustion Upon my nerves resembled that of a narcotic

And rendered me less susceptible Than perhaps I should in any other condition have been Of the exciting fears which had become habitual to me Then again a little bit of the window was open. A pleasant freshness pervaded the room, and to crown all, the cheerful sun of day was making the room quite pleasant. What was to prevent my enjoying an hour's nap here? The whole air was resonant with the cheerful hum of life, and the broad, matter-of-fact, light of day filled every corner of the room.

I yielded, stifling my qualms to the almost overpowering temptation, and merely throwing off my coat and loosening my cravat, I lay down, limiting myself to half an hour's doze in the unwanted enjoyment of a featherbed, a coverlet, and a bolster. It was horribly insidious, and the demon, no doubt, marked my infatuated preparations. Dulp that I was, I fancied with mind and body worn out for want of sleep, and in a rear of a full week's rest to my credit, that such measure as half an hour's sleep in such a situation was possible.

My sleep was death-like, long, dreamtube. Without a start or fearful sensation of any kind, I waked gently, but completely. It was, as you have good reason to remember, long past midnight. I believe about two o'clock. When sleep has been deep and long enough to satisfy nature thoroughly, one often wakens in this way, suddenly, tranquilly, and completely. There was a figure seated in that lumbering old sofa chair near the fireplace. Its back was rather towards me, but I could not be mistaken. It turned, slowly round and merciful heavens. There was the stony face, with its infernal liniments of malignity and despair gloating on me. There was now no doubt adds to its consciousness of my presence,

in the hellish malice with which it was animated, for it arose and drew close to the bedside. There was a rope about its neck, and the other end coiled up. It held stiffly in its hand. My good angel nerved me for this horrible crisis. I remained, for some seconds transfixed by the gaze of this tremendous phantom. He came close to the bed and appeared on the point of mounting upon it. The next instant I was upon the floor at the far side, and in a moment more was, I don't know how, upon the lobby. But the spell was not yet broken. The valley of the shadow of death was not yet traversed. The abhorred phantom was before me there. It was standing near the banisters, stooping a little, and with one end of the rope

round its own neck was poising a noose at the other, as if to throw over mine. And while engaged in this baleful pantomime, it wore a smile so sensual, so unspeakably dreadful, that my senses were nearly overpowered. I saw and remember nothing more until I found myself in your room. I had such a wonderful escape, Dick. There was no disputing that, an escape for which, while I live I shall bless the mercy of heaven. No one can conceive or imagine what it is for flesh and blood to stand in the presence of such a thing. but one who has had the terrific experience. Dick.

Dick, a shadow has passed over me. A chill has crossed my blood and marrow, and I will never be the same again. Never, Dick, never. Our handmaid, a mature girl of two and fifty, as I've said, stayed her hand, as Tom's story proceeded. And by little and little drew near to us, with open mouth and her brows contracted over her little,

beady black eyes, till stealing a glance over her shoulder now and then, she established herself close behind us. During the relation, she had made various earnest comments in an undertone, but these and her ejaculations, for the sake of brevity and simplicity, I've omitted in my narration. It's often I heard tell of it, she now said, but I never believed it rightly till now. Oh, indeed, oh, I should not I. Does not my mother, down there in the lane, no choir stories. God bless us, beyond telling about it. But you ought not to have slept in the back bedroom. She was loved to let me be going in and out of that room even in the daytime, let alone for any Christian to spend the night in it. For sure, she says it was his own

bedroom. Whose own bedroom? We ask in her breath. Why, his? The old judges, George Horrocks, to be sure, God rest his soul, and she looked fearfully round. Amen, I muttered. But did he die there? tie there? No, not quite there, she said. Sure was knotted over the banisters he hung himself. The old sinner, God be merciful to us all, and it was not in the alcove they found the handles of the skipping rope cut off. And the knife where he was settling the cord, God bless us to hang himself with. It was his housekeeper's daughter owned the rope. My mother often told me, and the child never throve after, and used to be starting up out of her sleep and screeching in the night time, with dreams and frights that come on her, and they said how it was the spirit of the old judge that was tormenting her. And she used to be roaring and yelling out to hold back the big old fellow with the crooked neck, and then she'd screech, oh, the master of the master, he's stomping at me, and beckoning to me, mother darling, don't let me go. And so the poor crater died at last, and the doctor said it was Wather on the brain, for it

was all they could say. How long ago was all this? I asked. Oh, then how would I know? She answered. But it must be a wonderful long time ago, for the housekeeper was an old woman with a pipe in her mouth. And not a tooth left, and better nor eighty years old when my mother was first married. And they said she was a rail-boxome, fine-dressed woman. Would the old judge come to his end? And indeed, my mother's not far from eighty years old herself this day. And what made it worse for the unnatural old villain, God rest his soul, to frighten the little girl out of the world the way he did, was what was mostly thought and believed by everyone. A mother says how the poor little crether was his own child, for he was by all accounts an old villain every way in the hang and this judge that ever

was known in Ireland's ground. From what you said about the danger of sleeping in that bedroom, said I. I suppose there were stories about the ghost having appeared there to others. Well, there Was things said, inquire things, surely, she answered, as it seemed with some reluctance. Why would not there? Sure, was it not up in that same room he slept for more than twenty years? And was it not in the alcove he got the rope ready that done his own business at last the way he done many a better man's in his lifetime? And was not the body lying in the same bad after death, and put in the coffin there too and carried out to his grave from it? in Pether's Churchyard after the coroner was done. But there was queer stories my mother had some all

about how one Nicholas Spate got into trouble on the head of it. And what did they say of this Nicholas Spate? I asked. Oh, for that mother it's soon told, she answered. And she certainly did relate a very strange story which so piqued my curiosity that I took occasion to visit the ancient lady, her mother, from whom I learned many very curious particulars. Indeed, I am tented to tell the tale, but my fingers are wary, and I must defer it. But if you wish to hear it another time, I shall do my best.

When we had heard the strange tale, I have not told you. We put one or two further questions to her about the alleged spectral visitations to which the house had ever since the death of the wicked old judge been subjected. No one ever had luck in it, she told us. There was always cross-accidents, sudden deaths, and short-time. in it. The first that took it was a family. I forget their name, but at any rate there was two young ladies and their papa. He was about sixty, and a stout, healthy gentleman as you'd wish to see at that age. Well, he slept in that unlucky back bedroom, and God between us an arm,

sure enough, he was found dead one morning, half out of the bed, and with his head as black as a slew and swelled like a pudding hanging down near the door. It was a fit, they said. He was as dead as a mackerel, and so he could not say what it was. But the old people was all sure that it was nothing at all but the old judge, God bless us, that frightened him out of his senses and his life together. Sometime after there was a rich old maiden lady took the house. I don't know which room she slept in, but she left alone, and at any rate, one morning the servants going down early to their work found her sitting on the passage stairs, shivering and talking to herself quite mad. And never word more could any of them or her friends get from her,

ever afterwards, but don't ask me to go for a promise to wait for him. They never made out from her who it was she meant by him. But of course, those that knew all about the old house were at no loss for the meaning of all that happened to her. Then afterwards, when the house was lit out in lodgings, there was Mickey Byrne that took the same room, with his wife and three little children. And sure as I heard Mrs. Byrne myself telling how the children used to be, lifted up in bed at night, she could not see by what means, and how they were starting and screeching.

every hour. Just all as one, as the housekeeper's little girl that died. Till at last one night, poor Mickey had a drop in him, the way he used now and again. And what do you think in the middle of the night he thought he heard a noise on the stars? And being in liquor, nothing less to do him. But out he must go himself to see what was wrong. Well, after that, all she ever heard of him was himself saying, Oh God! And a tumble that shook the very house. And there sure enough, he was line on the lower stairs under the lobby, with his neck smashed double under him, where he was flung over the banisters. Then the henmaiden added, I'll go down to the lane and send up Joe Gavey to pack up the rest of the tithings, and bring all the things across to your new lodgings.

And so we all sallied out together, each of us breathing more freely, I have no doubt, as we crossed that ill-omened threshold for the last time. Now I may add thus much in compliance with the immemorial usage of the realm of fiction, which sees the hero not only through his adventures, but fairly out of the world. You must have perceived that what the flesh, blood, and bone hero of romance proper is to the regular compounder fiction, this old house of brick, wood, and mortar is to the humble recorder of this true tale. I therefore relate as his duty-bound, the catastrophe which ultimately befell it, which was simply this, that about two years subsequently to my story it was taken by a quack doctor who called himself.

Baron Doolstorff, and filled the parlor windows with bottles of indescribable horrors preserved in brandy, and the newspapers were the usual grand eloquent and mendacious advertisements. This gentleman among his virtues did not reckon sobriety, and one night being overcome with much wine he set fire to his bedcurtains, partially burned himself, and totally consumed the house. It was afterwards rebuilt, and for a time an undertaker established himself in the premises. I have now told you my own and Tom's adventures, together with some viable, collateral particulars. And having acquitted myself of my engagement, I wish you a very good night and pleasant dreams. End of Section 6.

An account of some strange disturbances in Anger Street. Section 7 of Madame Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheraton LeFanue. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. by Ben Tucker. Ghost stories of Chappellazade. Anonymous in the Dublin University magazine, 1851. We see Lofanou beginning to be attracted by the old village, a suburb of Dublin, which he made the scene of what is perhaps his best novel, The House by the Churchyard, 1862-63.

Take my word for it. There is no such thing as an ancient village, especially if it has seen better days, unillustrated by its legends of terror. You might as well expect to find a decaying. cheese without mites, or an old house without rats, as an antique and dilapidated town without an authentic population of goblins. Now, although this class of inhabitants are in no wise amenable to the police authorities yet, as their demeanor directly affects the comforts of Her Majesty's subjects, I cannot but regard it as a grave omission that the public have hitherto

been left without any statistical returns of their numbers, activities, etc., etc. And I am persuaded that a commission to inquire into and report upon the numerical strength, habits, haunts, etc., etc., of supernatural agents resident in Ireland, would be a great deal more innocent and entertaining than half the commissions for which the country pays, and, at least as instructive. This, I say, more from a sense of duty, and to deliver my mind of a grave truth than with any hope of seeing the suggestion adopted, but I am sure my readers will deplore with me that the comprehensive powers of belief and apparently elitimable leisure

possessed by parliamentary commissions of inquiry should never have been applied to the subject I've named, and that the collection of that species of information should be confided to the gratuitous and desultory labors of individuals who, like myself, have other occupations to attend to. This, however, by the way. Among the village outposts of Dublin, Chappellazade once held a considerable, if not a foremost rank,

Without mentioning its connection with the history of the great Kilmainham preceptory of the Knights of St. John, it will be enough to remind the reader of its ancient and celebrated castle, not one vestige of which now remains, and of the fact that it was for, we believe, some centuries the summer residence of the viceroys of Ireland. The circumstances of its being up, we believe, to the period at which that corps was disbanded. The headquarters of the Royal Irish Artillery gave it also a consequence of a humbler, but not less substantial kind. With these advantages in its favor,

it is not wonderful that the town exhibited at one time an air of substantial and semi-aristocratic prosperity unknown to Irish villages in modern times. A broad street with a well-paved footpath and houses as lofty as were at that time to be found in the fashionable streets of Dublin, a goodly stone-fronted barrack, an ancient church vaulted beneath, and with a tower clothed from its summit to its base with the richest ivy, an humble Roman Catholic chapel, a steep bridge spanning the liffy,

and a great old mill at the near end of it, were the principal features of the town. These, or at least most of them, remain still, but the greater part in a very changed and forlorn condition. Some of them indeed are superseded, though not obliterated by modern erections. Such as the bridge, the chapel, and the church in part, the rest forsaken by the order who originally raised them, and delivered up to poverty and in some cases to absolute decay. The village lies in the lap of the rich and wooded valley of the liffy, and is overlooked by the high grounds of the beautiful Phoenix Park on the one side, and by the ridge of the Palmer's Town Hills on the other.

Its situation, therefore, is eminently picturesque, and factory fronts and chimneys notwithstanding it has, I think, even in its decay, a sort of melancholy picturesqueness of its own. Be that as it may, I mean to relate two or three stories of that sort which may be read with very good effect by a blazing fire on a shrewd winter's night, and all are directly connected with the altered and somewhat melancholy little town I have named. The first I shall relate concerns the village, bully. About 30 years ago, there lived in the town of Chappellazade,

an ill-conditioned fellow of Herculian strength, well known throughout the neighborhood by the title Bully Larkin. In addition to his remarkable physical superiority, this fellow had acquired a degree of skill as a pugilist, which alone would have made him formidable. As it was, he was the autocrat of the village, and carried not the scepter in vain. Conscious of his superiority, and perfectly secure of impunity, he lorded it over his fellows in a spirit of cowardly and brutal insolence, which made him hated even more profoundly than he was feared. Upon more than one occasion he had deliberately forced quarrels upon men whom he had singled out for the exhibition of his savage prowess, and in every encounter his overmatched antagonist had received an amount of punishment which edified and appalled the spectators,

and in some instances left ineffaceable scars and lasting injuries after it. Bully Larkin's pluck had never been fairly tried, for, owing to his prodigious superiority in weight, strength, and skill, his victories had always been. and certain and easy. And in proportion to the facility with which he uniformly smashed an antagonist, his pugnacity and insolence were inflamed. He thus became an odious nuisance in the neighborhood, and the terror of every mother who had a son, and of every wife who had a husband who possessed a spirit to resent insult, or the smallest confidence in his own pugilistic capabilities. Now it happened that there was a young fellow named Ned Moran, better known by the sobriquet of long Ned from his slender,

Lathy proportions, at that time living in the town. He was, in truth, a mere lad, 19 years of age, and fully 12 years younger than the stalwart bully. This, however, as the reader will see, secured for him no exemption from the dastardly provocations of the ill-conditioned pugilist.

Long Ned, in an evil hour, had thrown eyes of affection upon a certain buxom damsel, who, notwithstanding bully Larkin's amorous rivalry, inclined to reciprocate them. I need not say how easily the spark of jealousy once kindled is blown into a flame and how naturally, in a coarse and ungoverned nature, it explodes in acts of violence and outrage. The bully watched his opportunity and contrived to provoke Ned Moran, while drinking in a public house with a party of friends, into an altercation,

in the course of which he failed not to put such insults upon his rival as manhood could not tolerate. long ned, though a simple, good-natured sort of fellow, was by no means deficient in spirit and retorted in a tone of defiance which edified the more timid and gave his opponent the opportunity he secretly coveted. Bully Larkin challenged the heroic youth, whose pretty face he had privately consigned to the mangling and bloody discipline he was himself so capable of administering. The quarrel, which he had himself contrived to get up, to a certain degree, covered the ill blood and malignant premeditation which inspired his proceedings, and Long Ned, being full of generous

ire and whiskey punch, accepted the gauge of battle on the instant. The whole party, accompanied by a mob of idle men and boys, and in short by all who could snatch a moment from the calls of business, proceeded in slow procession through the old gate into the Phoenix Park, and mounting the hill overlooking the town, selected near its summit a level spot on which to decide the quarrel. The combatants stripped, and a child might have seen in the contrast presented by the slight-length form and limbs of the lad, and the muscular and massive build of his veteran antagonist, how desperate was the chance of poor Ned Moran. Seconds and bottle-holders, selected, of course, for their love of the game, were appointed, and the fight commenced. I will not shock my readers with the description of the cold-blooded butchery that followed.

The result of the combat was what anybody might have predicted. At the eleventh round poor Ned refused to give in. The brawny pugilist, unhurt in good wind, and pale with concentrated and as yet unslaked revenge, had the gratification of seeing his opponent seated upon his second's knee, unable to hold up his head, his left arm disabled, his face of bloody, swollen and shapeless mass, his breast, scarred and bloody, and his whole body panting and quivering with rage and exhaustion. Give in Ned, my boy! cried more than one of the bystanders.

Never, never, shrieked he with a boy's horse and choking. Time being up, his second, placed him on his feet again. Blinded with his own blood, panting and staggering, he presented but a helpless mark for the blows of his stalwart opponent. It was plain that a touch would have been sufficient to throw him to the earth, but Larkin had no notion of letting him off so easily. He closed with him, without striking a blow, the effect of which, prematurely dealt would have been to bring him at once to the ground and so put an end to the combat,

and getting his battered and almost senseless head under his arm, fast in that peculiar fix known to the fancy pleasantry by the name of Chancery. He held him firmly, while with monotonous and brutal strokes he beat his fist as it seemed almost into his face. A cry of shame broke from the crowd, for it was plain that the beaten man was now insensible and supported only by the Herculian arm of the bull, The round and the fight ended by his hurling him upon the ground, falling upon him at the same time with his knee upon his chest. The bully rose, wiping the perspiration from his white face with his blood-stained hands, but Ned lay stretched and motionless upon the grass. It was impossible to get him upon his legs for another round, so he was carried down, just as he was, to the pond which then lay close to the old park gate, and his head and body were washed beside it. contrary to the belief of all he was not dead he was carried home and after some months to a certain extent recovered

but he never held up his head again and before the year was over he had died of consumption nobody could doubt how the disease had been induced but there was no actual proof to connect the cause and effect and the ruffian larkin escaped the vengeance of the law a strange retribution however awaited him after the death of long ned he became less quarrelsome than before but more sullen and reserved. Some said he took it to heart and others that his conscience was not at ease about it. Be this as it may, however, his health did not suffer by reason of his presumed agitations, nor was his worldly prosperity marred by the blasting curses with which poor Moran's enraged mother pursued him. On the contrary, he had rather risen in the world, and obtained regular and well-renumerated employment from the chief secretary's gardener at the other side of the park. He still lived in Chappellazade, whither, on the close of his day's work,

he used to return across the 15 acres. It was about three years after the catastrophe we have mentioned, and late in the autumn when one night, contrary to his habit, he did not appear at the house where he lodged. Neither had he been seen anywhere during the evening in the village. His hours of return had been so very regular that his absence excited considerable surprise,

though, of course, no actual alarm. And at the usual hour, the house was closed for the night, and the absent lodger consigned to the mercy of the elements and the care of his presiding star. Early in the morning, however, he was found lying in a state of utter helplessness upon the slope, immediately overlooking the Chappellazade gate. He had been smitten with a paralytic stroke. His right side was dead, and it was many weeks before he had recovered his speech sufficiently to make himself at all understood. He then made the following relation. He had been detained, it appeared, later than usual, and darkness,

had closed before he commenced his homeward walk across the park. It was a moonlit night, but masses of ragged clouds were slowly drifting across the heavens. He had not encountered a human figure, and no sounds but the softened rush of the wind sweeping through bushes and hollows met his ear. These wild and monotonous sounds, and the utter solitude which surrounded him, did not, however, excite any of those uneasy sensations which are ascribed to superstition, although he said he did feel depressed, or in his own phraseology, Loadsome. Just as he crossed the brow of the hill which shelters the town of Chappellazade,

the moon shone out for some moments with unclouded luster, and his eye which happened to wander by the shadowy enclosures which lay at the foot of the slope, was arrested by the sight of a human figure climbing, with all the haste of one pursued over the churchyard wall, and running up the steep ascent directly towards him. Stories of resurrectionists crossed his recollection as he observed this suspicious-looking figure, but he began momentarily to be aware with a sort of fearful instinct which he could not explain that the running figure was directing his steps with a sinister purpose towards himself. The form was that of a man with a loose coat about him, which, as he ran, he disengaged, and as well as Larkin could see, for the moon was again waiting in clouds

through from him. The figure thus advanced until within some two-score yards of him, it arrested at its speed and approached with a loose, swaggering gait. The moon again shone out bright and clear and gracious God. What was the spectacle before him? He saw as distinctly as if he had been presented there in the flesh. Ned Moran himself, stripped naked from the waist upward, as if for pugilistic combat, and drawing towards him in silence. Larkin would have shouted, prayed, cursed, fled across the park.

But he was absolutely powerless. The apparition stopped within a few steps, leered on him with a ghastly mimicry of the defiant stare with which pugilus strive to cow one another before combat. For a time which he could not so much as conjecture, he was held in the fascination of that unearthly gaze, and at last the thing, whatever it was, on a sudden swaggered close up to him with extended palms. With an impulse of horror, Larkin put out his hand to keep the figure off, and their palms touched, at least so he believed, for a thrill of unspeakable, agony, running through his arm, pervaded his entire frame, and he fell senseless to the earth.

Though Larkin lived for many years after, his punishment was terrible. He was incurably maimed, and being unable to work, he was forced for existence to beg alms of those who had once feared and flattered him. He suffered, too, increasingly under his own horrible interpretation of the preternatural encounter, which was the beginning of all his miseries. It was vain to endeavor to shake his faith in the reality of the apparition, an equally vain as some compassionately did to try to persuade him that the greeting with which his vision closed was intended

while inflicting a temporary trial to signify a compensating reconciliation. No, no, he used to say, All won't do. I know the meaning of it well enough. There is a challenge to meet him in the other world. In hell where I am going. That's what it means and nothing. else. And so, miserable and refusing comfort, he lived on for some years, and then died and was

buried in the same narrow churchyard, which contains the remains of his victim. I need hardly say how absolute was the faith of the honest inhabitants at the time when I heard the story, in the reality of the preternatural summons which, through the portals of terror, sickness, and misery had summoned bully Larkin to his long last home, and that too, upon the very ground on which he had signalled the guiltiest triumph of his violent and vindictive career. I recollect another story of the preternatural sort, which made no small sensation some five and thirty years ago, among the good gossips of the town, and, with your leave, courteous reader, I shall relate it.

The Sexton's Adventure Those who remember Chappellazade a quarter of a century ago or more may possibly recollect the parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much in awe by truant boys, who sauntered into the churchyard on Sundays to read the tombstones, or play leapfrog over them, or climb the ivy in search of bats or sparrows' nests, or peep into the mysterious aperture under the eastern window, which opened a dim perspective of descending steps losing themselves among profounder darkness, where lidless coffins gaped horribly among tattered velvet bones and dust, which time and mortality had strewn there. such horribly curious and otherwise enterprising juveniles, Bob was, of course, the special scourge and terror. But terrible as was the official aspect of the sexton, and repugnant as his length form, clothed in rusty, sable venture, his small frosty visage, suspicious gray eyes and rusty brown's scratch wig, might appear to all notions of genial frailty. It was yet true that

Bob Martin's severe mortality sometimes nodded, and that Bacchus did not always solicit him in vain. Bob had a curious mind, a memory well stored with merry tales, and tales of terror. His profession familiarized him with graves and goblins, and his tastes with weddings, wossil, and sly frolics of all sorts. And as his personal recollections ran back nearly three-score years into the perspective of the village history, his fund of local anecdote was copious, accurate, and edifying. As his ecclesiastical revenues were by no means considerable, He was not unfrequently obliged for the indulgence of his tastes to arts which were, at the best, undignified. He frequently invited himself when his entertainers had forgotten to do so.

He dropped in accidentally upon small drinking parties of his acquaintance in public houses and entertained them with stories, queer or terrible, from his inexhaustible reservoir, never scrupling to accept an acknowledgement in the shape of hot whiskey punch or whatever else was going. There was at that time a certain A Trebilious publican called Philip Slaney Established in a shop nearly opposite the old turnpike This man was not, when left to himself, Immoderately given to drinking,

But being naturally of a saturnine complexion, And his spirits constantly requiring a Philip, He acquired a prodigious liking for Bob Martin's company. The Sexton's society, in fact, gradually became the solace of his existence, and he seemed to lose his constitutional melancholy in the fascination of his sly jokes and marvelous stories. This intimacy did not redound to the prosperity or reputation of the convivial allies.

Bob Martin drank a good deal more punch than was good for his health, or consistent with the character of an ecclesiastical functionary. Philip Slaney, too, was drawn into similar indulgences, for it was hard to resist the genial seductions of his gifted companion, and as he was obliged to pay for both, his purse was believed to have suffered even more than his head and liver. Be this as it may, Bob Martin had the credit of having made a drunkard of Black Phil Slaney, for by this cognomen was he distinguished, and Phil Slaney had also the reputation of having made the sexton, if possible, a bigger bliggered than ever.

Under these circumstances, the accounts of the concern opposite the turnpike became somewhat entangled, and it came to pass one drowsy summer morning, the weather being at once sultry and cloudy, that Philip Slaney went into a small back parlor, where he kept his books in which commanded through its dirty window panes, a full view of a dead wall, and having bolted the door, he took a loaded pistol, and clapping the muzzle in his mouth,

blew the upper part of his skull through the ceiling. This horrid catastrophe shocked Bob Martin extremely, and partly on this account, and partly because having been, on several late occasions, found at night in a state of abstraction, bordering on insensibility upon the high road, he had been threatened with dismissal. And, as some said, partly also, because of the difficulty of finding anybody to treat him, as poor Phil Slaney used to do, he, for a time, forswore alcohol in all its combinations,

and became an eminent example of temperance and sobriety. Bob observed his good resolutions, greatly to the comfort of his wife, and the edification of the neighborhood with tolerable punctuality. He was seldom tipsy and never drunk, and was greeted by the better part of society with all the honors of the prodigal son. Now it happened about a year after the grisly event we have mentioned that the curate, having received by the post, due notice of a funeral to be consummated in the churchyard of Chappellazade,

with certain instructions respecting the site of the grave, dispatched a summons for Bob Martin, with a view to communicate to that functionary these official details. It was a lowering autumn night. Piles of lurid thunder clouds, slowly rising from the earth, had loaded the sky with a solemn and boating canopy of storm. The growl of the distant thunder was heard afar off upon the dull still air, and all nature seemed, as it were, hushed and cowering under the oppressive influence of the approaching tempest. It was past nine o'clock when Bob, putting on his official coat of seedy black, prepared to attend his professional superior.

"'Bobby Darling,' said his wife, before she delivered the hat she held in her hand to his keeping. "'Sure you won't, Bobby Darling, you won't. You know what?' "'I don't know what,' he retorted smartly, grasping at his hat. "'You won't be throwing up the little finger, Bobby, Akusha,' she said, evading his grasp. "'Ara, why would I, woman? There, give me my hat, will you?' "'But won't you promise me, Bobby, darling? "'Won't you, Alana?' "'Aye, aye, to be sure I will. Why not?

"'There, give me my heart and let me go.' "'Aye, but you're not promising. "'Bobby, Mavarin, you're not promising all the time.' "'Well, div'll carry me if I drink a drop till I come back again,' said the sexton angrily. "'Will that do you? "'And now will you give me my heart?' "'Here it is, darling,' she said.

"'And God send you safe back.' "'And with this parting blessing, she closed the door "'upon his retreating figure, for it was now quite dark, and resumed her knitting till his return very much relieved, for she thought that he had of late been, oftener tipsy than was consistent with his thorough reformation, and fearing the allurements of the half-dozen Publix which he had at that time to pass on his way to the other end of the town. They were still open, and exhaled a delicious reek of whiskey, as Bob glided wistfully by them, but he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked the other way, whistling resolutely,

and filling his mind with the image of the curate and anticipations of his coming fee. Thus he steered his morality safely through these rocks of offense and reached the curates lodging in safety. He had, however, an unexpected sick call to attend and was not at home, so that Bob Martin had to sit in the hall and amuse himself with the devil's tattoo until his return. This, unfortunately, was very long delayed, and it must have been fully twelve o'clock when Bob Martin set out upon his, his homeward way. By this time the storm had gathered to a pitchy darkness. The bellowing thunder

was heard among the rocks and hollows of the Dublin Mountains, and the pale blue lightning shone upon the staring fronts of the houses. By this time, too, every door was closed, but as Bob trudged homeward, his eye mechanically sought the public house, which had once belonged to Phil Slaney. A faint light was making its way through the shutters and the glass panes over the doorway, which made a sort of dull, foggy halo about the front of the house. As Bob's eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity by this time, the light in question was quite sufficient to enable him to see a man in a sort of loose riding coat, seated upon a bench,

which at that time was fixed under the window of the house. He wore his hat very much over his eyes and was smoking a long pipe. The outline of a glass and a quart bottle were also dimly traceable beside him, and a large horse saddled, but faintly. discernible, was patiently awaiting his master's leisure. There was something odd, no doubt, in the appearance of a traveler, refreshing himself at such an hour in the open street, but the sexton accounted for it easily by supposing that, on the closing of the house for the night, he had taken what remained of his refection, to the place where he was now discussing it Al Fresco.

At another time, Bob might have saluted the stranger as he passed with a friendly good night, but somehow he was out of humor, and in his own. in no genial mood, and was about passing without any courtesy of the sort, when the stranger without taking the pipe from his mouth, raised the bottle, and with it beckoned him familiarly, while with a sort of lurch of the head and shoulders, and at the same time shifting his seat to the end of the bench, he pantomimically invited him to share his seat and his cheer. There was a divine fragrance of whiskey about the spot, and Bob half relented, but he remembered his promise, just as he began to waver and said,

"'No, I thank you, sir, I can't stop tonight.' The stranger beckoned with a vehement welcome, and pointed to the vacant space on the seat beside him. "'I thank you for your polite offer,' said Bob. "'But it's what I'm too late as it is.' "'And haven't time to spare, so I wish a good night.' The traveler jingled the glass against the neck of the bottle, as if to intimate that he might at least swallow a dram without losing time.

Bob was mentally quite of the same opinion, but though his mouth watered, he remembered his promise, and shaking his head with incorruptible resolution, walked on. The stranger, pipe and mouth, rose from his bench, the bottle in one hand, and the glass in the other, and followed at the sexton's heels his dusky horse keeping close in his wake. There was something suspicious and unaccountable in this importunity. Bob quickened his pace, but the stranger followed close. The sexton began to feel queer and turned about. His pursuer was behind and still inviting him with impatient gestures to taste his liquor.

I told you before, said Bob, who was both angry and frightened, that I would not taste it, and that's enough. I don't want to have anything to say to you or your bottle, and in God's name, he added more vehemently, observing that he was approaching still closer. Fall back and don't be tormenting me this way. These words, as it seemed, incensed the stranger, for he shook the bottle with violent menace at Bob Martin. But, notwithstanding this gesture of defiance, he suffered the distance between them to increase.

Bob, however, beheld him, dogging him still in the distance, for his pipe shed a wonderful red glow, which duskily illuminated his entire figure like the lurid atmosphere of a meteor. I wish the devil had his own, my boy, muttered the excited sexton, and I know well enough where he'd be. The next time he looked over his shoulder, to his dismay, he observed the importunate stranger as close as ever upon his track. Confound you! cried the man of skulls and shovels, almost beside himself with rage and horror.

What is it you want of me? The stranger appeared more confident, and kept wagging his head and extending both glass and bottle toward him as he drew near, and Bob Martin heard the horse snorting as it followed in the dark. Keep it to yourself whatever it is, for there is neither grace nor luck about you, cried Bob Martin, freezing with terror. Leave me a load, will you? And he fumbled in vain among the seething confusion of his ideas for a prayer or an exorcism. He quickened his pace almost to a run.

He was now close to his own door, under the impending bank by the riverside. Let me in! Let me in for God's sake! Molly, open the door! He cried as he ran to the threshold and lent his back against the plank. His pursuer confronted him upon the road. The pipe was no longer in his mouth, but the dusky red glow still lingered round him. He uttered some inarticulate cavernous sounds,

which were wolfish and indescribable, while he seemed employed and pouring out a glass from the bottle. The sexton kicked with all his force against the door and cried at the same time with a despairing voice, In the name of God Almighty, once for all, leave me alone. His pursuer furiously flung the contents of the bottle at Bob Martin, but instead of fluid, it issued out in a scream of flame which expanded and whirled round them,

and for a moment they were both enveloped in a faint blaze. At the same instant a sudden gust whisked off to stranger's hat, and the sexton beheld that his skull was roofless. For an instant he beheld the gaping aperture, black and shattered, and then he fell senseless into his own doorway, which his affrighted wife had just unbarred. I need hardly give my reader the key to this most intelligible and authentic narrative. The traveler was acknowledged by all to have been the specter of the suicide,

called up by the evil one to tempt the convivial sexton into a violation of his promise, sealed as it was by an imprecation. Had he succeeded, no doubt the dusky steed, which Bob had seen saddled in attendance, was destined to have carried back a doubled burden to the place from whence he came. As an attestation of the reality of this visitation, the old thorn tree which overhung the doorway was found in the morning to have been blasted with the infernal fires which had issued from the bottle, just as if a thunderbolt had scorched it. The moral of the above tale is upon the surface apparent and, so to speak, self-acting, a circumstance which happily ovates the necessity of our discussing it together. taking our leave, therefore, of honest Bob Martin, who now sleeps soundly in the same solemn dormitory, where, in his day, he made so many beds for others, I come to a legend of the Royal Irish Artillery,

whose headquarters were for so long a time in the town of Chappellazade. I don't mean to say that I cannot tell a great many more stories, equally authentic and marvelous, touching this old town, but as I may possibly have to perform a like office for other localities, and as Anthony Poplar is known like Atropos to carry a shears, wherewith to snip across all yarns, which exceed reasonable bounds. I consider it, on the whole, safer to dispatch the traditions of Chappellazade with one tale more. Let me, however, first give it a name, for an author can no more dispatch a tale without a title, than an apothecary can deliver his physic without a label.

We shall therefore call it the Spectre Lovers. There looped some fifteen years since, in a small and ruinous house, little better than a hovel, an old woman who was reported to have considerably exceeded her 80th year, and who rejoiced in the name of Alice, or popularly, Ali Moran. Her society was not much courted, for she was neither rich nor, as the reader may suppose, beautiful. In addition to a lean cur and a cat, she had one human companion, her grandson, Peter Bryan, whom, with laudable good nature, she had supported from the period of his orphanage down to that of my story, which finds him in his twentieth year. Peter was a good-natured slob of a fellow, much more addicted to wrestling, dancing, and love-making than to hard work,

and fonder of whiskey punch than good advice. His grandmother had a high opinion of his accomplishments, which indeed was but natural, and also of his genius, for Peter had of late years begun to apply his mind to politics, and as it was plain that he had a mortal hatred of honest labor, his grandmother predicted, like a true fortune-teller, that he was born to Marion Eress, and Peter himself, who had no mind to forego his freedom even on such terms, that he was destined to find a pot of gold.

Upon one point both agreed that being unfitted by the peculiar bias of his genius for work, he was to acquire the immense fortune, to which his merits entitled him by means of a pure run of good luck. This solution of Peter's future had the double effect of reconciling both himself and his grandmother to his idle courses, and also of maintaining that even flow of hilarious spirits which made him everywhere welcome, and which was in truth the natural result of his consciousness of approaching affluence. It happened one night that Peter had enjoyed himself to a very late hour with two or three choice spirits near Palmer's town. They had talked politics and love,

sung songs and told stories, and above all, had swallowed in the chastened disguise of punch, at least a pint of good whiskey, every man. It was considerably past one o'clock when Peter bid his companions goodbye, with a sigh and a hiccough, and lighting his pipe set forth on his solitary homeward way. The bridge of Chappellazade was pretty nearly the midway point of his night march, and from one cause or another his progress was rather slow, and it was past two o'clock by the time he found himself, leaning over its old battlements and looking up the river over whose winding current and wooded banks the soft moonlight was falling.

The cold breeze that blew lightly down the stream was grateful to him. It cooled his throbbing head and he drank it in at his hot lips. The scene too had, without his being well sensible of it, a secret fascination. The village was sunk in the profoundest slumber, not a mortal stirring, not a sound afloat, a soft haze covered it all. and the fairy moonlight hovered over the entire landscape. In a state between rumination and rapture, Peter continued to lean over the battlements of the old bridge, and as he did so he saw, or fancied he saw,

emerging one after another along the riverbank, in the little gardens and enclosures in the rear street of Chappellazade, the queerest little whitewashed huts and cabins he had ever seen there before. They had not been there that evening when he passed the bridge on the way to his merry trist, But the most remarkable thing about it was the odd way in which these quaint little cabins showed themselves. First he saw one or two of them, just with the corner of his eye, and when he looked full at them, strange to say, they faded away and disappeared. Then another and another came in view, but all in the same coy way,

just appearing and gone again before he could well fix his gaze upon them. In a little while, however, they began to bear a fuller gaze, and he found, as it seemed to himself, that he was able by an effort of attention to fix the vision for a longer and a longer time, and when they waxed faint and nearly vanished, he had the power of recalling them into light and substance, until at last their vacillating indistinctness

became less and less, and they assumed a permanent place in the moonlit landscape. Be the hokey, said Peter, lost in amazement, and dropped his pipe into the river unconsciously. "'Tham as the quarrest bits of mud cabins I ever seen, "'growing up like mushrooms in the dew of an evening, "'and popping up here and down again there, "'and up again in another place,

"'like so many white rabbits and a warren. "'And there they stand at last as firm and fast "'as if they were there from the deluge, "'but it's enough to make a man a most believe in the fairies.' "'This latter was a large concession from Peter, "'who was a bit of a freethinker, and spoke contemptuously in his ordinary conversation of that class of agencies. Having treated himself to a long last stare at these mysterious fabrics,

Peter prepared to pursue his homeward way, having crossed the bridge and passed the mill. He arrived at the corner of the main street of the little town, and casting a careless look up the Dublin Road, his eye was arrested by a most unexpected spectacle. This was no other than a column of foot soldiers, marching with perfect regularity towards the village, and headed by an officer on horseback. They were at the far side of the turnpike,

which was closed, but much to his perplexity, he perceived that they marched on through it without appearing to sustain the least check from that barrier. On they came at a slow march, and what was most singular in the matter was that they were drawing several cannons along with them. Some held ropes, others spoke to the wheels, and others again marched.

in front of the guns and behind them, with muskets shouldered, giving a stately character of parade and regularity to this, as it seemed to Peter, most unmilitary procedure. It was owing either to some temporary defect in Peter's vision or to some illusion attendant upon mist and moonlight, or perhaps to some other cause, that the whole procession had a certain waving and vapory character, which perplexed and tasked his eyes not a little. It was like the pictured pageant of a phantasmodasagoria reflected upon smoke. It was as if every breath disturbed it. Sometimes it was blurred, sometimes obliterated, now here, now there. Sometimes, while the upper part was quite distinct, the legs of the column would nearly fade away or vanish outright. And then again they would come out

into clear relief, marching on with measured tread, while the cocked hats and shoulders grew, as it were, transparent, and all but disappeared. Notwithstanding these strange optical fluctuations, however, the column continued steadily to advance. Peter crossed the street from the corner near the old bridge, running on tiptoe, and with his body stooped to avoid observation, and took up a position upon the raised footpath in the shadow of the houses, where as the soldiers kept the middle of the road, he calculated that he might himself undetected, see them distinctly enough as they passed.

What the devil! What on earth! he muttered, checking the... religious ejaculation with which he was about to start, for certain queer misgivings were hovering about his heart, notwithstanding the factitious courage of the whiskey bottle. What on earth is the men of all this? Is it the French that's landed at last to give us a hand and help us in earnest to this blessed repal? If it is not them, I simply ask who the dip... I mean who on earth are they? For such soldiers as them I never seen before in my born days. By this time the foremost of them were quite near, and truth to say they were the

queerest soldiers he had ever seen in the course of his life. They wore long gaiters and leather breeches, three-cornered hats, bound with silver lace, long blue coats, with scarlet facings and linings, which latter were shown by a fastening, which held together the two opposite corners of the skirt behind, and in front of the breasts were in like manner connected at a single point, where and below which they sloped back, disclosed a long flapped waistcoat of snowy whiteness. They had very large, long cross-belts, and more enormous pouches of white leather hung extraordinarily low, and on each of which a little silver star was glittering.

But what struck him as most grotesque and outlandish in their costume was their extraordinary display of shirt-frill in front, and of ruffle about their wrists, and the strange manner in which their hair was frizzled out and powdered under their hats and clubbed up into great rolls behind. But one of the party was mounted. He rode a tall white horse with high action and arching neck. He had a snow-white feather in his three-cornered hat, and his coat was shimmering all over with a profusion of silver lace. From these circumstances, Peter concluded that he must be the commander of the detachment, and examined him as he passed attentively. He was a slight tall man, whose legs did not half-fill his leather breeches, and he appeared to be at the wrong side of sixty.

He had a shrunken, weather-beaten, mulberry-colored face, carried a large black patch over one eye, and turned neither to the right nor to the left, but rode on at the head of his men, with a grim, military inflexibility. The countenances of these soldiers, officers as well as men, seemed all full of trouble, and, so to speak, scared and wild. He watched in vain for a single, contented, or comely face. They had one and all a melancholy and hang-dog look, and as they passed by Peter fancied that the air grew cold and thrilling.

He had seated himself upon a stone bench, from which, staring with all his might, he gazed upon the grotesque and noiseless procession as it filed by him. Noiseless it was. He could neither hear the jingle of accoutrements, the tread of feet, nor the rumble of the wheels. And when the old colonel turned his horse a little and made as though he were giving the word of command,

and a trumpeter with a swollen blue nose and white-feather-fringed, round his hat, who was walking beside him, turned about and put his bugle to his lips. Still, Peter heard nothing. Although it was plain the sound had reached the soldiers, for they instantly changed their front to the abreast. Botheration, muttered Peter. Is it deaf I'm groan? But that could not be, for he heard the sighing of the breeze and the rush of the neighbouring Liffey, plain enough. Well, said he, in the same cautious key, by the piper. This bangs Bonagher fairly.

It's either the French army that's in it, come to take the town of Chaplers out by surprise, and making no noise for fear of waking and inhabitants, or else it's, it's, what's it's, something else. But thunder anewens, what's gone with Fitzpatrick's shop across the way? The brown dingy stone building at the opposite side of the street looked newer and cleaner than he had been used to see it. The front door of it stood open. and a sentry in the same grotesque uniform with shouldered musket was pacing noiselessly to and fro before it.

At the angle of this building, in like manner, a wide gate, of which Peter had no recollection whatever, stood open, before which also a similar sentry was gliding, and into this gateway the whole column gradually passed, and Peter finally lost sight of it. "'I'm not asleep, I'm not draming,' said he, rubbing his eyes, and stamping slightly on the pavement to assure himself that he was wide awake. It is a choir business, whatever it is, and it's not alone in that. But everything about the town looks strange to me. There's Tresham's house new-painted, Bedad, and them flowers in the windies,

and Delaney's house, too, that had not a whole pane of glass in it this morning, and scarce a slate on the roof of it. It is not possible. It's what's drunk I am. Sure, there's the big tree, and not a leaf of it changed since the past, and the star is overhead all right. I don't think it is in my eyes it is. And so, looking about him, and every moment finding or fancying new food for wonder, he walked along the pavement, intending, without further delay, to make his way home.

But his adventures for the night were not concluded. He had nearly reached the angle of short lane that leads up to the church, when for the first time he perceived that an officer in the uniform he had just seen was walking before only a few yards in advance of him. The officer was walking along at an easy swinging gate, and carried his sword under his arm, and was looking down on the pavement with an air of reverie. And the very fact that he seemed unconscious of Peter's presence,

and disposed to keep his reflections to himself, there was something reassuring. Besides, the reader must please to remember that our hero had a quantum sufficient of good punch before his adventure commenced, and was thus fortified against those qualms and terrors under which, in a more reasonable state of mind, he might not impossibly have sunk, the idea of the French invasion revived in full power in Peter's fuddled imagination,

as he pursued the nonchalant swagger of the officer. "'By the powers, if Molly Kelly, I'll ax him what it is,' said Peter with a sudden accession of rashness. "'He may tell me or not as he places, but it can't be offended, anyhow.' With this reflection, having inspired himself, Peter cleared his voice and began. "'Captain,' said he, "'I ask you pardon, Captain, "'and maybe you'd be so condescending "'to my ignorance as to tell me

"'if it's pleasing to your honour, "'whether your honour is not a Frenchman "'if it plays into you.' "'This, he asked, not thinking, "'that had it been, as he suspected, "'not one word of his question "'in all probability "'would have been intelligible to the person he addressed.

"'He was, however, understood, "'for the officer answered him in English, "'at the same time slackening his, pace and moving a little to the side of the pathway, as if to invite his interrogator to take his place beside him. "'No, I am an Irishman,' he answered. "'I humbly thank, your honor,' said Peter, drawing nearer, for the affability and the nativity of the officer encouraged him.

"'But maybe your honor is in the service of the King of France.' "'I serve the same king as you do,' he answered, with a sorrowful significance which Peter did not comprehend at the time, and, interrogating in turn, he asked, But what calls you forth at this hour of the day? The day, your order. The night, you mean. It was always our way to turn night into day, and we keep to it still, remarked the soldier, but no matter, come up here to my house. I have a job for you, if you wish to earn some money easily. I live here. As he said this, he beckoned authoritatively to Peter, who followed almost

mechanically at his heels, and they turned up a little lane near the old Roman Catholic chapel, at the end of which stood in Peter's time the ruins of a tall stone-built house. Like everything else in the town it had suffered a metamorphosis. The stained and ragged walls were now erect, perfect, and covered with pebble-dash. Window panes glittered coldly in every window. The green hall door had a bright brass knocker on it. Peter did not know whether to believe his previous or his present impressions. Seeing as believing, and Peter could not dispute the reality of the scene. All the records of his memory seemed but the images of a tipsy dream.

In a trance of astonishment and perplexity, therefore, he submitted himself to the chances of his adventure. The door opened, the officer beckoned with a melancholy air of authority to Peter, and entered. Our hero followed him in a sort of hall which was very dark, but he was guided by the steps of the soldier, and in silence they ascended the stairs. The moonlight, which shone in. at the lobbies, showed an old dark wainscoting, and a heavy oak banister.

They passed by closed doors at different landing places, but all was dark and silent, as indeed became that late hour of the night. Now they ascended to the topmost floor. The captain paused for a minute at the nearest door, and, with a heavy groan, pushing it open, entered the room. Peter remained at the threshold, a slight female form in a sort of loose white robe, and with a great deal of dark hair hanging loosely about her, was standing in the middle of the floor with her back towards them.

The soldier stopped short before he reached her, and said, in a voice of great anguish, Still the same, sweet bird, sweet bird, still the same. Whereupon she turned suddenly, and threw her arms about the neck of the officer with a gesture of fondness and despair, and her frame was agitated as if by a burst of sobs. He held her close to his breast in silence,

and honest Peter felt a strange terror creep over him, as he witnessed these mysterious sorrows and endearments. Tonight, tonight, and then ten years more, ten long years, another ten years. The officer and the ladies seemed to speak these words together. Her voice mingled with his in a musical and fearful wail like a distant summer wind in the dead hour of night wandering through ruins. Then he heard the officer say alone in a voice of anguish. Upon me be it all forever

Sweet birdie upon me And again they seemed to mourn together in the same soft and desolate wail Like sounds of grief heard from a distance Peter was thrilled with horror But he was also under a strange fascination And an intense and dreadful curiosity held him fast The moon was shining obliquely into the room And through the window Peter saw the familiar slopes of the park

sleeping mistily under its shimmer. He could also see the furniture of the room with tolerable distinctness, the old balloon-backed chairs, a four-post bed in a sort of recess, and a rack against the wall, from which hung some military clothes and accoutrements, and the sight of all these homely objects reassured him somewhat, and he could not help feeling unspeakably curious to see the face of the girl whose long hair was streaming over the officer's epaulet. Peter accordingly coughed, at first slightly, and afterward,

more loudly to recall her from her reverie of grief. And apparently he succeeded, for she turned round, as did her companion, and both, standing hand in hand gazed upon him fixedly. He thought he had never seen such large, strange eyes in all his life, and their gaze seemed to chill the very air around him and arrest the pulses of his heart. An eternity of misery and remorse was in the shadowy faces that looked upon him. If Peter had taken less whiskey by a single thimbleful, it is probably that he would have lost heart altogether before these figures,

which seemed every moment to assume a more marked and fearful, though hardly definable contrast, to ordinary human shapes. What is it you want with me? He stammered. To bring them my lost treasure to the churchyard, replied the lady in a silvery voice of more than mortal desolation. The word treasure revived the resolution of Peter, although a cold sweat was covering him, and his hair was bristling with horror.

He believed, however, that he was on the brink of fortune, if he could but command Nerve to brave the interview to its close. And where? he gasped. Is it hid? Where will I find it? They both pointed to the sill of the window, through which the moon was shining at the far end of the room, and the soldier said, under that stone. Peter drew a long breath and wiped the cold dew from his face

preparatory to passing to the window, where he expected to secure the reward of his protracted terrors. But looking steadfastly at the window, he saw the faint image of a newborn child sitting upon the sill in the moonlight, with its little arms stretched toward him, and a smile so heavenly

as he never beheld before. At sight of this, strange to say, his heart entirely failed him. He looked on the figures that stood near and beheld them gazing on the infantine form with a smile so guilty and distorted that he felt as if he were entering alive among the scenery of hell.

And shuddering, he cried in an irrepressible agony of horror. I'll have nothing to say with you, and nothing to do with you. I don't know what ye's are or what you want with me, but let me go this minute every one of you is, in the name of God. When these words there came a strange rumbling and sighing about Peter's ears, he lost sight of everything,

and felt that peculiar and not unpleasant sensation of falling softly, that sometimes super ravines in sleep, ending in a dull shock. After that he had neither dream nor consciousness till he wakened, chill and stiff, stretched between two piles of old rubbish among the black and roofless walls of the ruined house. We need hardly mention that the village had put on its wanted air of neglect and decay, or that Peter looked around him in vain for traces of those novelties which had so puzzled and distracted him upon the previous night.

"'Aye, aye,' said his grandmother, removing her pipe, as he ended his description of the view from the bridge. "'Sure enough, I remember myself, when I was a slip of a girl. These little white cabins among the gardens by the riverside, the artillery soldiers that was married, or had not room in the barracks, used to be in them. But they're all gone long ago. "'The Lord be merciful to us,' she resumed when he had described the military procession. "'It's often I seen the regiment marching into the town.

"'Just as you saw it last night, Ashla. "'Oh, wosh, but it makes my heart sore to think of them days. "'They were pleasant times, sure enough. "'But is not it terrible a big. "'To think it's what it was the ghost of the regiment he's seen. "'The Lord between us in harm, for it was nothing else, as sure as I'm sitting here.' when he mentioned the peculiar physiognomy and figure of the old officer who rode at the head of the regiment. That? said the old crone dogmatically.

Was old Colonel Gremshaw? The Lord Preseravus he's buried in the churchyard of Chapelisod. Edwell, I remember him. When I was a young thin and cross old floggin fellow he was with the men and the devil's boy among the girls, rest his soul. Amen, said Peter. It's often a Rita's tombstone myself, but he is a long time dead. Sure, I tell you he died when I was no more than a sleep of a girl. The Lord betune us in harm.

I'm afraid it is what I'm not long for this world myself, after seeing such a sight as that, said Peter fearfully. No sense of Arneen, retorted his grandmother, indignantly, though she had herself misgivings on the subject. Sure, there was Phil Dolan, the ferryman, that seen black and scandin in his own boat, and what harm ever came of it. Peter proceeded with his narrative,

but when he came to the description of the house in which his adventure had had so sinister a conclusion, the old woman was at fault. I knowed a house on the old walls well, and I can remember the time there was a roof on it, and the doors and windows in it, but it had a bad name about being haunted, but by who or for what I forget entirely.

Did you ever hear was there, gould or silver there? He inquired. No, no of it. Don't be thinking about the likes. Take a fool's advice, and never go next or near them ugly black walls again the longest day you have to live. And I'd take my davy, if it's what the same word the priest himself I'd be after, saying, to you offer, or to his axes, reverence concerning it. For it's plain to be seen, it was nothing good you seen there, and there's neither luck nor grace about it. Peter's adventure made no little noise in the neighborhood, as the reader may well suppose. And a few evenings after it being on an errand to old Major Vandallur, who lived in a snug, old-fashioned house close by the river, under a perfect bower of ancient trees, he was called on to relate the story in the parlor. The Major was, as I've said, an old man.

He was small, lean, and upright, with a mahogany complexion and a wooden inflexibility of face. He was a man besides a few words, and if he was old, it follows plainly that his mother was older still. Nobody could guess or tell how old, but it was admitted that her own generation had long passed away, and that she had not a competitor left. She had French blood in her veins, and although she did not retain her charms quite so well as Nino del Linclos, she was in full possession of all her mental activity, and talked quite enough for herself and the major. "'So, Peter,' she said,

"'you've seen the dear old Royal Irish again in the streets of Chappellazard. make him a tumbler punch, Frank, and Peter sit down, and while you take it, let us have the story. Peter accordingly, seated near the door, with the tumble of the nectarian stimulant steaming beside him, proceeded with marvelous courage, considering they had no light but the uncertain glare of the fire, to relate with minute particularity, his awful adventure.

The old lady listened at first with a smile of good-natured incruity, her cross-examination, touching the drinking bout at Palmer's Town, had been teasing, but as the narrative proceeded, she became attentive, and at length absorbed, and once or twice she uttered ejaculations of pity or awe. When it was over, the old lady looked with a somewhat sad and stern abstraction on the table, patting her cat assiduously meanwhile, and then suddenly, looking upon her son the major, she said, Frank, as sure as I live, he has seen the wicked, Captain Deverell. The major uttered an inarticulate.

expression of wonder. The house was precisely that he has described. I've told you the story often, as I heard it from your dear grandmother, about the poor young lady he ruined, and the dreadful suspicion about the little baby. She, poor thing, died in that house heartbroken, and you know he was shot shortly after in a duel. This was the only light that Peter ever received respecting his adventure. It was supposed, however, that he still clung to the hope that treasure of some sort was hidden about the old house, for he was often seen lurking about its walls, and at last his fate overtook him poor fellow in the pursuit. For climbing near the summit one day, his hold gave way, and he fell upon the hard uneven ground, fracturing a leg and a rib, and after a short interval died,

and he, like the other heroes of these true tales, lies buried in the little churchyard of Chappellazod. End of Section 7. Ghost Stories of Chappellazade. Section 8. Of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. By J. Sheridan Le Funu. This is a Librevox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Read by Ben Tucker. Wicked Captain Walshaw of Walling. Anonymous in the Dublin University Magazine, 1816. Chapter 1. Peg O'Neill pays the captain's debts. A very odd thing happened to my uncle, Mr. Watson, of Haddlestone, and to enable you to understand it, I must begin at the beginning. In the year 1822, Mr. James Walshaw, more commonly known as Captain Walshaw, died at the age of 81 years. The captain, in his early days, and so long as

health and strength permitted, was a scamp of the active, intriguing sort, and spent his days and nights in sewing his wild oats, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible stock. The harvest of this tillage was plentifully interspersed with thorns, nettles, and thistles, which stung the husbandman unpleasantly and did not enrich him. Captain Walshaw was very well known in the neighborhood of Walling, and very generally avoided there. Captain, by courtesy, for he had never reached that rank in the army list. He had quitted the service in 1766 at the age of 25, immediately previous to which, period his debts had grown so troublesome that he was induced to extricate himself by running away with and marrying an heiress.

Though not so wealthy, quite as he had imagined, she proved a very comfortable investment for what remained of his shattered affections, and he lived and enjoyed himself very much in his old way, upon her income, getting into no end of scrapes and scandals, and a good deal of debt and money trouble. When he married his wife, he was quartered in Ireland, at Klonmel, where it was a nunnery in which, as pensioner resided, Miss O'Neill, or as she was called in the country, Pegg O'Neill, the heiress of whom I've spoken. Her situation was the only ingredient of romance in the affair, for the young lady was decidedly plain, though good-humoured-looking, with that style of features which is termed potato, and in figure she was a little too plump and rather short, but she was impressible, and the handsome young

English lieutenant was too much for her monastic tendencies, and she eloped. In England there are traditions of Irish fortune hunters, and in Ireland of English. The fact is, it was the vagrant class of each country that chiefly visited the other in old times, and a handsome vagabond, whether at home or abroad, I suppose, made the most of his face, which was also his fortune. At all events, he carried off the fair one from the sanctuary, and for some sufficient reason, I suppose, they took up their abode at Walling in Lancashire. Here the gallant captain amused himself after his fashion, sometimes running up, of course, on business, to London. I believe few wives have ever cried more in a given time than did that poor, dumpy, potato-faced

heiress, who got over the nunnery garden wall and jumped into the handsome captain's arms for love. He spent her income, frightened her out of her wits with oaths and threats, and broke her heart. Laterally, she shut herself up pretty nearly altogether in her room. She had an old, rather grim Irish servant woman in attendance upon her. This domestic was tall, lean, and religious, and the captain knew instinctively she hated him, and he hated her in return, and often threatened to put her out of the house, and sometimes even to kick her out of the window. And whenever a wet day confined him to the house or the stable and he grew tired of smoking, he would begin to swear and curse at her for a diddled old mischief-maker that could never be easy, and was always troubling

the house with her cursed stories. and so forth. But years passed away, and old Molly Doyle remained still in her original position. Perhaps he thought that there must be somebody there, and that he was not, after all, very likely to change for the better. Chapter 2. The Blessed Candle He tolerated another intrusion, too, and thought himself a paragon of patience and easy

good nature for so doing. A Roman Catholic clergyman, in a long black frock with a low-standing collar, and a little white muslin fillet around his neck, tall, sallow with blue chin and dark steady eyes, used to glide up and down the stairs and through the passages, and the captain sometimes met him in one place and sometimes in another. But by a caprice incident to such tempers, he treated this cleric exceptionally, and even with a surly sort of courtesy, though he grumbled about his visits behind his back. I do not know that he had a great deal of moral courage, and the ecclesiastic look severe and self-possessed, and somehow he thought he had no good opinion of him,

and if a natural occasion were offered, might say extremely unpleasant things, and hard to be answered. Well, the time came at last when poor Pegg O'Neill, in an evil hour Mrs. James Walshaw, must cry and quake and pray her last. The doctor came from Penland and was just as vague as usual. But more gloomy, and for about a week, came and went off. The cleric in the long black frock was also daily there, and at last came that last sacrament in the gates of death, when the sinner is traversing those dread steps that never can be retraced, when the face is turned forever from life, and we see a receding shape, and hear a voice already irrevocably in the land of spirits. So the poor lady died, and some people said the captain, felt it very much.

I don't think he did, but he was not very well just then, and looked the part of mourner and penitent to admiration, being seedy and sick. He drank a great deal of brandy and water that night, and called in Farmer Dobbs for want of better company to drink with him, and told him all his grievances and how happy he and the poor lady upstairs might have been, had it not been for liars and pick-thinks and tail-bearers and the like who came between them, meaning Molly Doyle, whom as he waxed eloquent over his liquor, he came at last to curse and rail at by name, with more than his accustomed freedom, and he described his own natural character and amiability in such moving terms that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme, and when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself,

and then mounted the stairs unsteadily to see what the devil, Doyle, and the other old witches were about in poor Peg's room. When he pushed open the door, he found some half-dozen crones, chiefly Irish, from the neighboring town of Hackleton, sitting over tea and snuff, etc., with candles lighted round the corpse,

which was arrayed in a strangely cut robe of brown serge. She had secretly belonged to some order, I think the Carmelite, but I am not certain, and wore the habit in her coffin. "'What the devil are you doing with my wife?' cried the captain rather thickly.

"'How dare you trace? "'I'll dress her up in this damn trumpery, you? "'Are you cheating old witch?' "'And what's that kindle doing it around?' "'I think he was a little startled, "'for the spectacle was grisly enough. "'The dead lady was arrayed in this strange brown robe, "'and in her rigid fingers, as in a socket,

"'with the large wooden beads and cross-wound round it, "'burned a wax candle shedding its white light "'over the sharp features of the corpse. "'Molly Doyle was not to be put down by the captain, whom she hated. And accordingly in her phrase, he got as good as he gave. And the captain's wrath waxed fiercer,

and he chucked the wax taper from the dead hand, and was on the point of flinging it at the old serving woman's head. The holy candle, you sinner! cried she. I've a mind to make you eat it, you beast, cried the captain. But I think he had not known before what it was, for he subsided a little sulkily

and he stuffed his hand with the candle, quite extinct by this time, into his pocket and said he, You know devilish well, you had no business going on with your damn witchcraft about my poor wife. Without my leave, you do, and you'll please to take off that damn brown pinafore, and get her decently into her coffin, and I'll pitch your devil's waxlight into the sink. And the captain stalked out of the room. And now her poor souls in prison, you wretch, be the minds of you,

and may your own be shot into the wick of that same candle till it's burned out, you savage. "'I'd have you ducked for a witch for two pence,' roared the captain up the staircase with his hand on the banisters, standing on the lobby. But the door of the chamber of death clapped angrily, and he went down to the parlor, where he examined the holy candle for a while with a tipsy gravity, and then with something of that reverential feeling for the symbolic, which is not uncommon in rakes and scamps. He thoroughly locked it up in a press, where were accumulated all sorts of obsolete rubbish, soil packs of cards, disused tobacco pipes, broken powder flasks, his military sword and a dusky bundle of the flash songster, another questionable literature. He did not trouble the dead lady's room anymore. Being a volatile man, it is probable that more cheerful plans and occupations began to entertain his fancy. Chapter 3. My Uncle Watson visits Walling.

So the poor lady was buried decently, and Captain Walshaw reigned alone for many years. years at Walling. He was too shrewd and too experienced by this time to run violently down the steep hill that leads to ruin. So there was a method in his madness, and after a widowed career of more than 40 years, he too died at last with some guineas in his purse. Forty years and upwards is a great Eda Rerom, and a wonderful chemical power. It acted forcibly upon the gay Captain Walshaw. Gout supervened and was no more conducive to temper than to enjoyment. It made his elegant hands lumpy at all the small joints, and turned them slowly into crippled claws. He grew stout when his exercise was interfered with, and ultimately almost corpulent.

He suffered from what Mr. Holloway calls bad legs, and was wheeled about in a great leathern-backed chair, and his infirmities went on accumulating with his years. I am sorry to say I never heard that he repented, or turned his thought seriously to the future. On the contrary, his talk grew fowler, and his fun ran upon his favorite sin. and his temper waxed more truculent, but he did not sink into dotage. Considering his bodily infirmities, his energies and his malignities, which were many inactive, were marvelously little abated by time, so he went on to the close.

When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him, the latter luckily not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine bottle or his tumbler at his head. It was a peculiarity of Captain Walshaw that he, by this time, hated nearly everybody. My uncle, Mr. Watson of Hadlestone, was cousin to the captain and his heir at law, but my uncle had lent him money on mortgage of his estates, and there had been a treaty to sell and terms and a price were agreed upon,

and articles which the lawyers said were still in force. I think the ill-conditioned captain bore him a grudge for being richer than he, and would have liked to do him an ill turn. But it did not lie in his way, at least while he was living. My uncle Watson was a Methodist and what they call a class leader, and on the whole a very good man. He was now near fifty, grave, as besiemed his profession, somewhat dry and a little severe perhaps, but a just man.

A letter from the Penlandin doctor reached him at Hadlestone, announcing the death of the wicked old captain, and suggesting his attendance at the funeral and the expediency of his being on the spot to look after things at walling. The reasonableness of this striking, my good uncle, he made his journey to the old house in Lancashire incontinently and reached it in time for the funeral. My uncle, whose traditions of the captain were derived from his mother,

who remembered him in his slim, handsome youth, in shorts, cocked hat, and lace, was amazed at the bulk of the coffin which contained his mortal remains, but the lid being already screwed down he did not see the face of the bloated, old sinner. Chapter 4 in the parlor. What I relate, I had from the lips of my uncle, who was a truthful man, and not prone to fancies. The day, turning out awfully rainy and tempestuous, he persuaded the doctor and the attorney

to remain for the night at walling. There was no will. The attorney was sure of that. The captain's enmities were perpetually shifting, and he could never quite make up his mind as to how best to give effect to a malignity whose direction was being constantly modified. He had instructions for drawing a will a dozen times over, but the process had always been arrested by the intending testator. Search being made, no will was found.

The papers indeed were all right with one important exception. The leases were nowhere to be seen. There were special circumstances connected with several of the principal tendencies on the estate, unnecessary here to detail, which rendered the loss of these documents, one of a very serious moment, and even of very obvious danger. My uncle, therefore, searched strenuously. The attorney was at his elbow, and the doctor helped with a suggestion now and then.

The old serving man seemed an honest, deaf creature, and really knew nothing. My uncle Watson was very much perturbed. He fancied, but this possibly was only fancy, that he had detected for a moment a queer look in the attorney's face, and from that instant it became fixed in his mind that he knew all about the leases. Mr. Watson expounded that evening in the parlor to the doctor, the attorney, and the deaf servant. Ananias and Safira figured in the foreground, and the awful nature of fraud and theft, or tampering in anywise with the plain rule of honesty and matters pertaining to estates, etc.,

were pointedly dwelt upon, and then came along in strenuous prayer, in which he entreated with fervor and plumed that the hard heart of the sinner who had abstracted the leases might be softened or broken in such a way. is to lead to their restitution, or that if he continued reserved and contumacious, it might at least be the will of heaven to bring him to public justice and the documents to light. The fact is that he was praying all this time at the attorney. When these religious exercises were over, the visitors retired to their rooms, and my uncle Watson wrote two or three pressing letters by the fire.

When his task was done, it had grown late. The candles were flaring in their sockets and all in bed, and, I suppose, asleep, but he. the fire was nearly out he chilly and the flame of the candles throbbing strangely in their sockets shed alternate glare and shadow round the old wainscotted room and its quaint furniture outside were the wild thunder and piping of the storm and the rattling of distant windows sounded through the passages and down the stairs like angry people astir in the house my uncle watson belonged to a sect who by no means reject the supernatural and whose founder on the contrary has sanctioned ghosts in the most emphatic way. He was glad, therefore, to remember that in prosecuting his search that day, he had seen some six inches of wax candle in the press in the parlor, for he had no fancy to be overtaken by darkness in his present situation. He had no time to lose. And taking the bunch of keys, of which he was now master, he soon fitted the lock and secured the candle, a treasure in his

circumstances, and lighting it he stuffed it into the socket of one of the expiring candles, and extinguishing the other he looked round the room in the steady light reassured. At the same moment, an unusually violent gust of the storm blew a handful of gravel against the parlor window, with a sharp rattle that startled him in the midst of the roar and hubbub, and the flame of the candle itself was agitated by the air. Chapter 5. The Bed Chamber My uncle walked up to bed, guarding his candle with his hand for the lobby windows, were rattling furiously, and he disliked the idea of,

being left in the dark more than ever. His bedroom was comfortable, though old-fashioned. He shot and bolted the door. There was a tall-looking glass opposite the foot of his four-poster, on the dressing-table between the windows. He tried to make the curtains meet, but they would not draw. And like many a gentleman in a like perplexity, he did not possess a pin, nor was there one in the huge pin cushion beneath the glass.

He turned the face of the mirror away, therefore, so that its back was presented to the bed, pulled the curtains together and placed a chair against them to prevent their falling open again. There was a good fire and a reinforcement of round coal and wood inside the fender, so he piled it up to ensure a cheerful blaze through the night, and placing a little black mahogany table with the legs of a satyr beside the bed and his candle upon it, he got between the sheets and laid his red-night-capped head upon the pillow and disposed himself to sleep.

The first thing that made him uncomfortable was a sound at the foot of his bed, quite distinct in a momentary lull of the storm. It was only the gentle rustle and rush of the curtains which fell open again, and as his eyes opened he saw them resuming their perpendicular dependence, and sat up in his bed almost expecting to see something uncanny in the aperture. There was nothing, however, but the dressing-table and other dark furniture, and the window-curtains faintly undulating in the violence of the storm. He did not care to get up, therefore, the fire being bright and cheery,

to replace the curtains by a chair, in the position in which he had left them, anticipating possibly a new recurrence of the relapse which had startled him from his incipient doze. So he got to sleep in a little while again, but he was disturbed by a sound as he fancied at the table on which stood the candle. He could not say what it was, only that he wakened with a start, and lying so in some amaze he did distinctly hear a sound which startled him a good deal, though there was nothing necessarily supernatural in it. He described it as resembling what would occur if you fancied a thinnish table leaf, with a convex warp in it, depressed the reverse way, and suddenly with a spring recovering its natural convexity. It was a loud sudden thump, which made the heavy candlestick jump,

and there was an end, except that my uncle did not get again into a dose for ten minutes at least. The next time he awoke it was in that odd, serene, that sometimes occurs. We open our eyes. We know not why, quite placidly, and are on the instant wide awake. He had had a nap of some duration this time, for his candle flame was fluttering and flaring, inarticulo, in the silver socket. But the fire was still bright and cheery, so he popped the extinguisher on the socket, and almost at the same time there came a tap at his door, and a sort of crescendo. Hush! Once more my uncle was sitting. sitting up, scared and perturbed in his bed. He recollected, however, that he had bolted his door,

and such inveterate materialists are we in the midst of our spiritualism that this reassured him, and he breathed a deep sigh and began to grow tranquil. But after a rest of a minute or two, there came a louder and sharper knock at his door, so that instinctively called out, "'Who's there?' In a loud stern key. There was no sort of response, however. The nervous effect of the The start subsided, and I think my uncle must have remembered how constantly, especially on a stormy night, these creeks or cracks which simulate all manner of goblin noises, make themselves naturally audible. Chapter 6. The extinguisher is lifted. After a while, then, he lay down with his back turned

toward that side of the bed at which was the door, and his face toward the table on which stood the massive old candlestick, capped with its extinguisher. And in that position, he lay down, he closed his eyes, but sleep would not revisit them. All kinds of queer fancies began to trouble him, some of them I remember. He felt the point of a finger, he averred, pressed most distinctly on the tip of his great toe, as if a living hand were between his sheets and making a sort of signal of attention or silence. Then again, he felt something as large as a rat make a sudden bounce in the middle of his bolster just under his head.

Then a voice said, oh, very gently close at the back of his head. All these things he felt certain of, and yet investigation led to nothing. He felt odd little cramps stealing now and then about him, and then on a sudden the middle finger of his right hand was plucked backwards, with a light playful jerk that frightened him awfully. Meanwhile, the storm kept singing and howling and ha-ha-hooing, hoarsely among the limbs of the old trees and chimney-pots,

and my uncle Watson, although he prayed and medded, as was his want when he lay awake, felt his heart throb excitedly, and sometimes thought he was beset with evil spirits, and at others that he was in the early stage of a fever. He resolutely kept his eyes closed, however, and, like St. Paul's shipwrecked companions, wished for the day. At last, another little doze seems to have stolen upon his senses, for he awoke quietly and completely as before, opening his eyes all at once, and seeing everything as if he had not slept for a moment. The fire was still blazing redly, nothing uncertain in the light.

The massive silver candlestick topped with its tall extinguisher stood on the center of the black mahogany table as before. And looking by what seemed a sort of accident to the apex of this, he beheld something which made him quite misdoubt the evidence of his eyes. He saw the extinguisher lifted by a tiny hand from beneath and a small human face, no bigger than a thumbnail with nicely proportioned features, peep from beneath it. And this Lilliputian countenance was such a ghastly consternation as horrified my uncle unspeakably. Out came a little foot then and there, and a pair of wee legs, and short silk stockings and buckled shoes.

Then the rest of the figure, and with the arms holding about the socket, the little legs stretched and stretched, hanging about the stem of the candlestick, till the feet reached the base. and sew down the satyr-like leg of the table till they reached the floor, extending elastically and strangely enlarging in all proportions as they approached the ground, where the feet and buckles were those of a well-shaped, full-grown man, and the figure, tapering upward, until it dwindled to its original fairy dimensions at the top, like an object seen in some strangely curved mirror. Standing upon the floor he expanded,

my amazed uncle could not tell how into his proper proportions. and stood pretty nearly in profile at the bedside, a handsome and elegantly shaped young man in a bygone military costume with a small laced three-cocked hat and plume on his head, but looking like a man going to be hanged in unspeakable despair. He stepped lightly to the hearth and turned for a few seconds very dejectedly with his back toward the bed and the mantelpiece,

and he saw the hilt of his rapier glittering in the firelight, and then walking across the room he placed himself at the dressing table, visible through the divided curtains at the foot of the bed. The fire was blazing still so brightly that my uncle saw him as distinctly as if half a dozen candles were burning. Chapter 7. The visitation culminates. The looking-glass was an old-fashioned piece of furniture, and had a drawer beneath it. My uncle had searched it carefully for the papers in the daytime,

but the silent figure pulled the drawer quite out, pressed a spring at the side, disclosing a false receptacle behind it, and from this he drew a parcel of papers tied together with pink tape. All this time my uncle was staring at him in a horrified state, neither winking nor breathing in the apparition had not once given the smallest intimation of consciousness that a living person was in the same room. But now, for the first time, it turned its livid stare full upon my uncle, with a hateful smile of significance,

lifted up the little parcel of papers between his slender finger and thumb. Then he made a long cunning wink at him and seemed to be. blow out one of his cheeks in a burlesque grimace, which but for the horrific circumstances would have been ludicrous. My uncle could not tell whether this was really an intentional distortion or only one of those horrid ripples and deflections, which were constantly disturbing the proportions of the figure, as if it were seen through some unequal and perverting medium. The figure now approached the bed, seeming to grow exhausted and malignant as it did so. My uncle's terror nearly culminated at this point, for he believed it was drawing near him with an evil purpose.

But it was not so, for the soldier, over whom twenty years seemed to have passed in his brief transit to the dressing-table and back again, threw himself into a great high-backed armchair of stuffed leather at the far side of the fire, and placed his heels on the fender. His feet and legs seemed indistinctly to swell, and swarthings showed themselves round them, and they grew into something, enormous, and the upper figure swayed and shaped itself into corresponding proportions, a great mass of corpulence, with a cadaverous and malignant face, and the furrows of a great old age, and colorless, glassy eyes.

And with these changes which came indefinitely but rapidly as those of a sunset cloud, the fine regimentals faded away in loose gray-wollen drapery somehow was there in its stead. And all seemed to be stained and rotten, for swarms of worms, seemed creeping in and out, while the figure grew paler and paler, till my uncle, who liked his pipe, and employed this simile naturally, said the whole effigy grew to the color of tobacco ashes, and the cluster of worms into the little wriggling knots of sparks, such as we see running over the residuum of a burnt sheet of paper. And so with the strong draught caused by the fire, and the current of air from the window, which was rattling in the storm, the feet seemed to be

drawn into the fireplace, and the whole figure, light as ashes, floated away with them, and disappeared with a whisk up the capacious old chimney. It seemed to my uncle that the fire suddenly darkened, and the air grew icy cold, and there came an awful roar and riot of tempest, which shook the old house from top to base, and sounded like the yelling of a bloodthirsty mob on receiving a new and long-expected victim. Good Uncle Watson used to say, I have been many situations of fear and danger in the course of my life, but never did I pray with so much agony before or since. For then, as now, it was clear beyond a cavil that I had actually beheld the phantom of an evil spirit.

Conclusion. Now there are two curious circumstances to be observed in this relation of my uncles, who was, as I've said, a perfectly voracious man. First, the waxed candle which he took from the press in the parlor and burnt at his bedside on that horrible night was unquestionably, according to the testimony of the old deaf servant who had been fifty years at walling, that identical piece of holy candle which had stood in the fingers of the poor lady's corpse, and concerning which the old Irish crone, long since dead, had delivered the curious curse I have mentioned against the captain. Secondly, behind the drawer under the looking-glass, he did actually discover a second but secret drawer, in which were concealed the identical papers, which he had suspected the attorney of having made away with. There were circumstances, too, afterwards, disclosed, which convinced my uncle that the old man had deposited them there, preparatory to burning them, which he had nearly made up his mind to do. Now, a very remarkable ingredient in this tale of my uncle Watson was this, that,

so far as my father, who had never seen Captain Walshaw in the course of his life could gather, the phantom had exhibited a horrible and grotesque but unmistakable resemblance to that defunct scamp in the various stages of his long life. Walling was sold in the year 1837, and the old house, shortly after, pulled down, and a new one built nearer to the river. I often wonder whether it was rumored to be haunted, and if so, what stories were current about it. It was a commodious and staunch old house, and withal rather handsome, and its demolition was certainly suspicious.

End of Section 8. Wicked Captain Walshaw of Walling. Section 9 Of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. By J. Sheridan Lefanoe. This Liber Vonk's recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Sir Dominic's Bargan, a legend of Dunerun. Anonymous in all the year round 1872. The theme occurs first in the fortunes of Sir Robert Ardaw, Dublin University Magazine 1838, reprinted in the Purcell papers.

It is varied and elaborated in the Haunted Baronet, Chronicles of Golden Friars, volumes one and two. In the early autumn of the year 1838, business called me to the south of Ireland. The weather was delightful. The scenery and people were new to me. And sending my luggage on by the mail-coach route in charge of a servant, I hired a serviceable nag at a posting-house. and full of the curiosity of an explorer, I commenced a leisurely journey of five and twenty miles on horseback, by sequestered crossroads, to my place of destination. By bog and hill, by plain and ruined castle,

and many a winding stream, my picturesque road led me. I had started late, and having made little more than half my journey, I was thinking of making a short halt at the next convenient place, and letting my horse have a rest and a feed, and making some provision also for the comforts of his rider. It was about four o'clock when the road, ascending a gradual steep, found a passage through a rocky gorge between the abrupt termination of a range of mountain to my left and a rocky hill that rose dark and sudden at my right.

Below me lay a little thatched village under a long line of gigantic beech trees, through the boughs of which the lowly chimneys sent up their thin turf smoke. To my left stretched away from miles, ascending the mountain range I have mentioned, a wild park through whose sward and ferns the rock broke, time-worn, and lichen-stained. This park was studded with straggling wood, which thickened to something like a forest, behind and beyond the little village I was approaching, clothing the irregular scent of the hillsides with beautiful and in some places discolored foliage. As you descend, the road winds slightly with the gray park wall,

built of loose stone and mantled here and there with ivy at its left, and crosses a shallow ford. And as I approached the village through breaks and the woodlands, I caught glimpses of the long front of an old ruined house, placed among the trees about halfway up

the picturesque mountainside. The solitude and melancholy of this ruin piqued my curiosity, and when I had reached the rude, thatched public house, with the sign of St. Columkill, with robes and mitre and crozier

displayed over its lentil, having seen to my horse and made a good meal myself on a racher and eggs, I began to think again of the wooded park in the ruinous house, and resolved on a ramble of half an hour among its sylvan solitudes. The name of the place I found was Dunerun, and beside the gate a style admitted to the grounds,

through which, with a pensive enjoyment, I began to saunter toward the dilapidated mansion. A long grass-grown road, with many turns and windings, led up to the old house under the shadow of the wood. The road as it approached the house skirted the edge of a precipitous, glen, clothed with hazel, dwarf, oak, and thorn, and the silent house stood with its wide open hall door facing this dark ravine, the further edge of which was crowned with towering forest, and great trees stood about the house and its deserted courtyard and stables.

I walked in and looked about me, through passages overgrown with nettles and weeds, from room to room with ceilings rotted, and here and there a great beam dark and worn with tendrils of ivy trailing over it. The tall walls with rotten plaster were stained and moldy, and in some rooms the remains of decayed wainscoting crazily swung to and fro. The almost sashless windows were darkened also with ivy, and about the tall chimneys the jackdaws were wheeling, while from the huge trees that overhung the glen and somber masses at the other side, the rooks kept up a ceaseless cawing. As I walked through these melancholy passages, peeping only into some of the rooms for the flooring was quite gone in the middle and bowed down toward the center

and the house was very nearly unroofed a state of things which made the exploration a little critical I began to wonder why so grand a house in the midst of scenery so picturesque had been permitted to go to decay I dreamed of the hospitality as of which it had long ago been the rallying place and I thought what a scene of red-gontlet revelries it might disclose at midnight The great staircase was of oak, which had stood the weather wonderfully, and I sat down upon its steps, musing vaguely on the transitoryness of all things under the sun. Except for the hoarse and distant clamor of the rooks, hardly audible where I sat, no sound broke the profound stillness of the spot.

Such a sense of solitude I have seldom experienced before. The air was stirless. There was not even the rustle of a withered leaf along the passage. It was oppressive, the tall trees that stood cold. close about the building darkened it and added something of awe to the melancholy of the scene. In this mood I heard, with an unpleasant surprise close to me, a voice that was drawling, and I fancied sneering, repeat the words. Food for the worms, dead and rotten, God over all!

There was a small window in the wall here, very thick, which had been built up, and in the dark recess of this deep in the shadow, I now saw a sharp-featured man sitting with his feet dangling. His keen eyes were fixed on me, and he was smiling cynically. And before I had well recovered my surprise, he repeated the distich. If death was a thing that money could buy, the rich they would live, and the poor they would die. It was a grand house in its day, sir, he continued, Donoran House, and the Sarasfield's, Sir Dominic, Sarisfield was the last of the old stock. He lost his life not six foot away from where you are sitting. As he thus spoke, he himself down with a little jump onto the ground. He was a dark-faced, sharp-featured little hunchback,

and had a walking stick in his hand, with the end of which he pointed to a rusty stain in the plaster of the wall. "'Do you mind that mark, sir?' he asked. "'Yes,' I said, standing up and looking at it, with a curious anticipation of something worth hearing. "'That's about seven or eight feet from the ground, sir, and you'll not guess what it is.' "'I dare say not,' said I, "'unless it is a stain from the weather. "'Tis nothing so lucky, sir,' he answered with the same cynical smile in the wag of his head, still pointing at the mark with his stick. "'That's a splash of brains and blood.

"'It's there this hundred years, and it will never leave it while the wall stands.' "'He was murdered, then?' "'Worse than that, sir,' he answered. "'He killed himself, perhaps. "'Worse than that, itself. "'This cross between us and not, sir,' he answered. harm. I'm older than I look, sir. You wouldn't guess my years. He became silent and looked at me, evidently inviting a guess. Well, I should guess you to be about five and fifty. He laughed and took a

pinch of snuff and said, I'm that, Your Honor, and something to the back of it. I was 70 last candelmas. You would not have thought that to look at me. Upon my word, I should not. I can hardly believe it even now. Still, you don't remember Sir Dominic Sarsfield's death? I said, glancing up at the ominous stain on the wall. No, sir, that was a long time before I was born, but my grandfather was Butler here long ago, and many a time I heard how Sir Dominic came by his death. There was no master in the great house ever since that happened. But there was two servants in Garavit, and my aunt was one of them. She kept me here with her till I was nine-year-old, and she was live. in the place to go to Dublin, and from that time it was let to go down. The wind stripped the roof,

and the rain rotted the timber, and little by little, in sixty years' time, it came to what you see. But I have a liking for it still, for the sake of old times, and I never come this way, but I take a look in. I don't think it's many more times I'll be turning to see the old police, for I'll be under the sod myself before long. You'll outlive younger people, I said. and quitting that trite subject I ran on. I don't wonder that you like this old place. It is a beautiful spot, such noble trees. I wish you see in the glen when the nuts is ripe.

They're the sweetest nuts in all Ireland, I think. He rejoined with a practical sense of the picturesque. You'd fill your pockets while you'd be looking about you. These are very fine old woods, I remarked. I have not seen any in Ireland I thought so beautiful. Yeah, your honor, the woods about here is not. nothing to what they wore. All the mountains along here was wood when my father was a gossoon, and Murrow Wood was the grandest of them all. All oak mostly and all cut down as bare as the road.

Not one left here that's fit to compare with them. Which way did your honour come hither, from Limerick? No, Killaloe. Well, then you passed the growl where Moro wood was in former times. You came under Liz Navora, the steep knob of a hill about a mile above the village here. It was near that Moro wood was, and t'was there, Sir Dominic Sarsfield first met the devil. The Lord between us and harm, and a bad meeting it was for him and his. I had become interested in the adventure which had occurred in the very scenery, which had so greatly attracted me, and my new acquaintance, the little hunchback, and was easily entreated to tell me the story, and spoke thus. So soon as we had each resumed his seat, it was a fine estate when Sir Dominic came into it,

And grand doings there was entirely Feasting and Fiddling Free quarters for all the pipers in the country road And a welcome for everyone that liked to come There was wine by the hogshead for the quality And poteen enough to set a town of fire And beer and cider enough to float a navy For the boys and girls and the likes of me

It was kept up the best part of a month Till the weather broke And the rain spoilt the sod for the monine jigs and the fare of Ali-Bali-Kiladeen coming on they wore obliged to give over their diversion and attend to the pigs. But Sir Dominic was only beginning when they wore Lavinov.

There was no way of getting rid of his money in estates he did not try. What with drinking, dice and racing, cards and all sorts. It was not many years before the estates wore in debt, and Sir Dominic, a distressed man. He showed a bold front to the world, as long as he could, and then he sold off his dogs and most of his horses, and gave out he was going to travel in France, and the like, and so off with him for a while, and no one in these parts

heard tale or tidings of him for two or three years. Till it last quite unexpected, one night there comes a-rapin at the big kitchen window. It was past ten o'clock in old Conor Hanlon. The butler, my grandfather, was sitting by the fire alone, warm in his shins over it. There was keen east wind blowing along the mountains that night, and whistling, cowled enough, through the tops of the trees, and sound and lonesome through the long chimneys. And the storyteller glanced up at the nearest stack visible from his seat. So he wasn't quite sure of the knocking at the window, and up he gets and sees his master's face. My grandfather was glad to see him safe, for it was a long time since there was any news of him, but he was sorry, too, for it was a changed place.

and only himself an old juggy Broderick in charge of the house, and a man in the stables, and it was a poor thing to see him coming back to his own like that. He shook con by the hand and says he, I came here to say a word to you, I left my horse with dick in the stable. I may want him again before morning, or I may never want him. And with that he turns into the big kitchen,

and draws a stool and sits down to take an air of the fire. Sit down, Connor, opposite me, and listen to what I tell you. "'It don't be a fear to say what you think.' "'He spoke all the time looking into the fire, "'with his hands stretched over it, "'and a tired man he looked. "'And why should I be a feared, Master Dominic?'

"'Says my grandfather. "'Yourself was a good master to me, "'and so was your father. "'Rest is sold before you, "'and I'll say the truth, and darn the devil. "'And more than that, "'for any Sarasfield of Donor and much less yourself "'and a good right I'd have.'

"'It's all over with me, Econ,' says Dominic. Heaven forbid, says my grandfather. To his past praying for, says Dominic. The last guinea's gone. The old place will follow it. It must be sold. And I'm come here. I don't know why.

Like a ghost, I have a last look round me, and go off in the dark again. And with that, he told him to be sure in case he should hear of his death to give the oak box in the closet of his room to his cousin, Pat Sarsfield, in Dublin. And the sword and pistols, his grandfather, carried an augrum, and two or three, thrifling things of the kind. And says he,

"'Cone, they say, if the devil gives you money out of night, you'll find nothing but a bag full of pebbles and chips and nutshell in the morning. If I thought he played fair, I'm in the humor to make a bargain with him tonight.' "'Lord forbid,' said my grandfather, standing up with a start and crossing himself. They say the country's full of men, listin, soldiers for the King of France, have a on one of them. I'll not refuse his offer, how contrary things goes. How long is it since me and Captain Waller fought the jewel at Newcastle? Six years, Master Dominic, and you broke his thigh with the bullet the first shot? I did, Con, says he, and I wish instead he had shot me through the heart. Have you any whiskey? My grandfather took it out of the Buffet, and the master pours out some into a

bowl and drank it off. I'll go out and have a look at my horse, says he standing up. There was a sort of a stare in his eyes, as he pulled his riding cloak about him, as if there was something bad in his thoughts. Sure, I won't be a minute running out myself to the stable and looking after the horse for you myself, says my grandfather. I'm not going to the stable, says Sir Dominic. I may as well tell you, for as you found it out already.

I'm going across the deer park. If I come back, you'll see him in an hour's time. But anyhow, you'd better not follow me, for if you do I'll shoot you, and that'd be a bad ending to our friendship. And with that, he walks down this passage here, and turns the key in the side door at the end of it, and out with him on the sod into the moonlight, and the cold and wind.

And my grandfather's seen him walking hard towards the park wall, and then he comes in and closes the door with a heavy heart. Sir Dominick stopped to think when he got to the middle of the deer park, For he had not made up his mind when he left the house, and the whiskey did not clear his head, only it gave him courage. He did not feel the cold wind now, nor fear death, nor think much of anything but the shame and fall of the old family. And he made up his mind if no better thought came to him,

between that and there, so soon as he came to Merle Wood. He'd hang himself from one of the oak branches with his cravat. It was a bright moonlight night. There was just a bit of a cloud driving across the moon now and then, but only for that as light a most as day. Down he goes right for the wood of Murrow. It seemed to him every step he took was as long as three, and it was no time till he was among the big oak trees,

with their roots spreading from one to another, and their branches stretching overhead like the timbers of a naked roof, and the moon shining down through them, and cast in their shadows, thick and twist abroad on the ground as black as my shoe. He was sobering a bit by this time, and he slacked his pace, and he thought t'would be better to list in the French King's army, and three what they might do for him, for he knew a man might take his own life any time, but it would puzzle him to take it back again when

he liked. Just as he made up his mind not to make away with himself, what should he hear but a step clinking along the dry ground under the trees, and soon he sees a grand gentleman right before him coming up to meet him. He was a handsome young man like himself, and he wore a cocked hat with gold lace rounded, such as officers wears on their coats, and he had on a dress the same as French officers wore in them times. He stopped opposite Sir Dominic, and he come to a standstill also.

The two gentlemen took off their hats to one another, and says the stranger, I am recruiting, sir, says he, for my sovereign and you. I'll find my money won't turn into pebbles, chips, and nut shells by tomorrow. At the same time, he pulls out a big purse full of gold. The minute he sets eyes on that gentleman, Sir Dominic, had his own opinion of him. And at those words, he felt the very hair standing up on his head. Don't be afraid, says he. The money won't burn you.

If it proves honest gold, and if it prospers with you, I'm willing to make a bargain. This is the last day of February, says he. I'll serve you seven years, and at the end of that time you shall serve me, and I'll come for you when the seven years is over, when the clock turns the minute between February and March. And the fire of March, you'll come away with me or never. You'll not find me a bad master any more than a bad servant.

I love my own, and I command. all the pleasures and the glory of the world. The bargain dates from this day, and the lease is out at midnight on the last day I told you. And in the year, he told him the year. It was easy reckoned, but I forget it. And if you'd rather wait, he says, for eight months and twenty-eight days, before you sign the writing you may, if you meet me here. But I can't do a great deal for you in the meantime.

and if you don't sign then, all you get from me up to that time will vanish away, and you will be just as you are tonight, and ready to hang yourself on the first tree you meet. Well, the end of it was. Sir Dominic chose to wait, and he came back to the house with a big bag full of money, as round as your hat almost. My grandfather was glad enough you may be sure to see the master safe and sound again so soon. Into the kitchen, he, he, bangs again and swings the bag of money on the table, and he stands up straight, and heaves up his shoulders like a man that has just got shot of a load, and he looks at the bag, and my grandfather looks at him, and from him to it and back again, Sir Dominic looked as white as a sheet,

and says he, "'I don't know, Con, what's in it? It's the heaviest load I ever carried.' He seemed shy of open in the bag, and he made my grandfather heap up a roar and fire of turf and wood, and then at last he opens it, and sure enough, t'was stuffed full of Golden guineas. Bright and new as if they were only that minute out of the mint. Sir Dominic made my grandfather sit at his elbow while he counted every guinea in the bag. When he was done counting and it wasn't far from daylight when that time came, Sir Dominic made my grandfather swear not to tell a word about it, and a close secret it was, for many a day after.

When the eight months and twenty-eight days were pretty near spent and ended. Sir Dominic returned to the house here with a troubled mind, in doubt what was best to be done. And no one alive but my grandfather knew anything about the matter, and he not half what had happened. As the day drew near toward the end of October, Sir Dominica grew only more and more troubled in mind. One time he made up his mind to have no more to say such things,

nor to speak again with the like of them he met in the wood if morea. Then again his heart failed him when he thought of his debts, and he not knowing where to turn. Then, only a week before the day, everything began to go wrong with him. One man wrote from London to say that Sir Dominic paid three thousand pounds to the wrong man and must pay it over again. Another demanded a debt he never heard before. And another in Dublin denied the payment of a thunder in Big Bill.

Sir Dominic could nowhere find the receipt and so on, with fifty other things as bad. Well, by the time the night of the 28th of October came round, he was almost ready to lose his senses with all the demands that was rising up against him on all sides and nothing to meet them but the help of the one dreadful friend he had to depend on at night and the oak wood down there below. So there was nothing for it but to go through with the business

that was begun already. In about the same hour as he went last he takes off the little crucifix he wore around his neck for he was a Catholic and his gospel and his bit of the through cross that he had in locket, for since he took the money from the evil one he was growing frightful in himself and got all he could to guard him from the power of the devil. But tonight, for his life, he dared not take them with him. So he gives them into my grandfather's hands without a word,

only he looked as white as a sheet of paper, and he takes his hat and sword, and telling my grandfather to watch for him, away he goes, to try what would come of it. It was a fine still night in the moon, not so bright, though now as the first time, was shining over heath and rock, and down on the lonesome oak wood below him. His heart beat thick as he drew near it. There was not a sound, not even the distant bark of a dog from the village behind him. There was not a lonesomer spot in the country road, and if it wasn't for his debts and losses that was driving him on half mad, in spite of his fears for his soul and his hopes of paradise, and all he was, all his good angel was whispering in his ear, he would have turned back and sent for his clergy

and made his confession and his penance, and changed his ways, and led a good life, for he was frightened enough to have done a great dale. Softer and slower he stopped as he got once more and under the big branches of the oak trees, and when he got in a bit near where he met the bad spirit before, he stopped and looked round him and felt himself every bit, turnin as cold as a dead man. And you may be sure he did not feel much better when he seen the same man stepping from behind the big tree that was touching his elbow almost.

You found the money good, says he. But it was not enough. No matter you shall have enough and despair. I'll see after your luck, and I'll give you a hint whenever it can serve you. and any time you want to see me you have only to come down here and call my face to mind and wish me present. You shan't owe a shilling by the end of the year, and you shall never miss the right card, the best throw, and the winning horse. Are you willing?

The young gentleman's voice almost stuck in his throat, and his hair was rising on his head. But he did get out a word or two to signify that he consented. And with that, the evil one handed him a needle, and bid him give him three drops of blood from his arm, and he took them in the cup of an acorn, and gave him a pin, and bid him write some words that he repeated. And that Sir Dominic did not understand, on two thin slips of parchment. He took one himself, and the other he sunk in Sir Dominic's arm at the place where he drew the blood, and he closed the flesh over it. and that's as true as you're sitting there. Well, Sir Dominic went home.

He was a frightened man, and well he might be. But in a little time he began to grow easier in his mind. Anyhow, he got out of a debt very quick, and money came tumbling in to make him richer, and everything he took in hand prospered, and he never made a wager or played a game, but he won. And for all that, there was not a poor man on the estate that was not happier than Sir Dominic.

So he took again to his old ways, For when the money came back, all came back, And there were hounds and horses and wine galore, And no end of company, And grand doings and diversion, Up here at the great house, And some said Sir Dominic was thinking of getting married, And more said he wasn't,

But anyhow, there was something in trouble in him more than common, And so one night, unnotes to all, He away goes to the lonesome oak wood. It was something maybe My grandfather thought was troubling him About a beautiful young lady He was jealous of And mad in love with her

But that was only guess Well, when Sir Dominic got into the wood this time He grew more in dread than ever And he was on the point of turning and lay in the place When who should he see close beside him But my gentleman seated on a big stone Under one of the trees In place of looking

The fine young gentlemen in gold lace and grand clothes he had been he was now in rags he looked twice the size he had been and his face smutted with soot and he had a marthering big steel hammer as heavy as a half-hundred with a handle a yard long across his knees it was so dark under the tree he did not see him quite clear for some time he stood up and he looked awful tall entirely and what passed between them in that discourse my grandfather never heard but sir dominick was as black as night afterwards, and hadn't a life for anything nor a word I must for anyone, and he only grew worse and worse, and darker and darker, and now this thing, whatever it was, used to come to him

of its own accord, whether he wanted it or no, sometimes in one shape, and sometimes in another, in lots of places, and sometimes at his side by night when he'd be riding home alone, until at last he lost heart altogether and sent for the priest. The priest was, with him a long time, and when he heard the whole story he rode off all the way for the bishop, and the bishop came here to the great house next day, and he gave Sir Dominic a good advice. He told him he must give over Dyson and swearing and drinking in all bad company, and live a virtuous steady life until the seven years bargain was out, and if the divil didn't come for him the minute after the stroke of twelve,

first morning of the month of March, he was safe out of the bargain. There was not more than eight or ten months to run now before the seven years wore out, and he lived all the time according to the bishop's advice, as strict as if he was in retreat. Well, you may guess he felt queer enough when the morning of the 28th of February came. The priest came up by appointment, and Sir Dominic and his reverence were together in the room, you see there, and kept up their prayers together till the clock struck twelve,

and a good hour after, and not a sign of, A disturbance, nor nothing came near them, and the priest slapped that night in the house in the room next Sir Dominic's. And all went over as comfortable as could be, and they shook hands and kissed like two comrades after winning a battle. So now Sir Dominic thought he might as well have a pleasant evening, and after all he is fasting and praying, and he sent round to half a dozen of the neighbouring gentlemen to come and dine with him, and his reverence stayed and dined also, and a roar and ball a punch they

head, and o-end to wine, and the swearing and dice, and cards and guineas changing hands, and songs and stories that wouldn't do anyone good to hear, and the priest slipped away, when he seen the turn things was taken, and it was not far from the stroke of twelve when Sir Dominic, sitting at the head of his table swears, this is the best first of March I ever sat down with my friends. "'It ain't the first of March,' said Mr. Hiffaron of Balivorine. He was a scullered and always kept an omanac. What is it then? says Dominic, starting up and dropping the ladle into the bowl and staring at him as if he had two heads.

Tis the 29th of February leap year, says he, and just as they were talking, the clock strikes twelve. And my grandfather, who was half asleep in a chair by the fire in the hall, open in his eyes, sees a short, square fellow with a cloak on, and long black hair bushing out. from under his heart, standing just there where you see the bitter light shining again the wall. My hunchback friend pointed with his stick to a little patch of red sunset light that relieved the deepening shadow of the passage. Tell your master, says he, in an awful voice, like the growl of a baste, that I'm here

by appointment and expect him downstairs this minute. up goes my grandfather by these very steps you are sitting on. Tell him I can't come down yet, says Sir Dominic. And he turns to the company in the room and says he with a cold sweat shining on his face. For God's sake, gentlemen, will any of you jump from the window and bring the priest here? One looked at another, and no one knew what to make of it. And in the meantime, up comes my grandfather again and says he, trembling. He says, sir, unless you go down to you.

to him, he'll come up to you. I don't understand this gentleman, I'll see what he means, says Sir Dominic, trying to put a face on it, and walking out of the room like a man through the press room, with a hangman waiting for him outside. Down the stairs he comes and two or three of the gentlemen peeping over the banisters to see. My grandfather was walking six or eight steps behind him, and he sees the stranger take a stride out to meet Sir Dominic and catch him up in his arms and whirl his head against the wall. And with that the hall door flies open, and out goes the candles, and the turf and wood ashes flying with the wind out of the whole fire, ran in a drift of sparks along the floor by his feet. Down runs the gentleman. Bang goes the

hall door. Some comes running up, and more running down with lights. It was all over with Sir Dominic. They lifted up the corpse And put its shoulders again the wall But there was not a gasp left in him He was cold and stiffened already Pat Donovan was coming up to the great house late that night And after he passed the little brook That the carriage track up the house crosses

And about fifty steps to the side of it His dog, that was by his side Makes a sudden wheel and springs over the wall And sets up a yowling inside You'd hear her a mile away And that minute, two men passed him by in silence, going down from the house. One of them short and square, and the other, like Sir Dominican shape, but there was little light under the trees where he was, and they looked only like shadows.

And as they passed him by, he could not hear the sound of their feet, and he drew back to the wall frightened. And when he got up to the great house, he found all in confusion, and the master's body, with the head smashed pieces, lying just on that spot. The narrator stood up and indicated with the point of his stick the exact sight of the body, and, as I looked, the shadow deepened. The red stain of sunlight vanished from the wall, and the sun had gone down behind the distant hill of Newcastle, leaving the haunted scene in the deep gray of darkening twilight.

So I and the storyteller parted, not without good wishes on both sides in a little tip, which seemed not unwelcome from me. It was dusk, and the moon up by the time I reached, the village, remounted my nag, and looked my last on the scene of the terrible legend of Donoran. End of Section 9, Sir Dominic's Bargain. Section 10 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by Jay Sheridan Laugh. This Librevox recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.

Alter de Lacey, a legend of Capricullen. Anonymous in the Dublin University Magazine, 1861. Chapter 1. The Jacobite's Legacy In my youth I heard a great many Irish family traditions, more or less of a supernatural character, some of them very peculiar, and all, to a child at least, highly interesting. One of these I will now relate, though the translation to Colt Type from oral narrative, with all the aides of animated human voice and countenance, in the appropriate meazen scene of the old-fashioned parlor fireside and its listening.

A listening circle of excited faces, and outside the wintry blast and the moan of leafless boughs, with the occasional rattle of the clumsy old window frame behind shuttering curtain, as the blast swept by, is it best a trying one? About midway up the romantic glen of Capricullen, near the point where the counties of Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary converge, upon the then-sequestered and forest-bound range of the sleeve-Fellum hills, There stood in the reins of the two earliest Georges, the picturesque and massive remains of one of the finest of the Anglo-Irish castles of Munster, perhaps of Ireland. It crowned the precipitous edge of the wooded glen, itself half-buried among the wild forests that covered that long and solitary range. There was no human habitation within a circle of many miles, except the half-dozen hovels, and the small-thatched chapel composing the little village of Murrowa,

which lay at the foot of the glen among the straggling skirts of the noble forest. Its remoteness and difficulty of access saved it from demolition. It was worth nobody's while to pull down and remove the ponderous and clumsy oak, much less the masonry or flagged roofing of the pile. Whatever would pay the cost of removal had been long since carried away. The rest was abandoned to time, the destroyer. The hereditary owners of this noble building, and of a wide territory in the contiguous counties I've named, were English, the Delacies, long naturalized in Ireland. They had acquired at least this portion of their estate in the reign of Henry VIII, and held it, with some vicissitudes down to the establishment of the revolution in Ireland, when they suffered a tanger, and, like other great families of that period, underwent a final eclipse.

The Delaci of that day retired to France and held a brief command in the Irish Brigade, interrupted by sickness. He retired, became a poor hanger-on of the Court of St. Germains, and died early in the 18th century, as well as I remember, 1705, leaving an only son, hardly 12 years old, called by the strange but significant name of Altur. At this point, commences the marvelous ingredient of my tale. When his father was dying, he had him to his best. bedside, with no one by except his confessor, and having told him first that on reaching the age of 21, he was to lay claim to a certain small estate in the county of Clare, in Ireland, in right of

his mother, the title deeds of which he gave him, and next, having enjoined him not to marry before the age of 30, on the ground that earlier marriages destroyed the spirit and power of enterprise, and would incapacitate him from the accomplishment of his destiny, the restoration of his family. He then went on to open to the child, a matter which so terrified him that he cried lamentably, trembling all over, clinging to the priest's gown with one hand and to his father's cold wrist with the other, and imploring him with screams of horror to desist from his communication. But the priest, impressed, no doubt himself with its necessity, compelled him to listen, and then his father showed him a small picture, from which also the child turned with shrieks, until similarly

constrained to look. They did not let him go until he had carefully conned the features, and was able to tell them from memory the color of the eyes and hair and the fashion and hues of the dress. Then his father gave him a black box containing this portrait, which was a full-length miniature, about nine inches long, painted very finely in oils, as smooth as enamel, and folded above it a sheet of paper, written over in a careful and very legible hand. The deeds in this black box constituted the most important legacy bequeathed to his only child by the ruined Jacobite, and he deposited them in the hands of the priest in trust till his boy Ulter should have attained to an age to understand their value and to keep them securely. When this scene was ended,

the dying exile's mind, I suppose, was relieved, for he spoke cheerily and said he believed he would recover, and they soothed the crying child, and his father kissed him and gave him a little silver coin to buy fruit with. And so they sent him off with another boy for a walk, and when he came back, his father was dead. He remained in France under the care of this ecclesiastic, until he had attained the age of 21, when he repaired to Ireland, and his title being unaffected by his father's attainder, he easily made good his claim to the small estate in the county of Clare. There he settled, making a dismal and solitary tour now and then of the vast territories, which had once been his father's, and nursing those gloomy and impatient thoughts which befitted the enterprises to which he was devoted.

Occasionally he visited Paris, that common center of English-Irish and Scottish disaffection. And there, when a little past thirty, he married the daughter of another ruined Irish house. His bride returned with him to the melancholy seclusion of their Munster residence, where she bore him in succession two daughters, Alice the elder, dark-eyed and dark-haired, grave and sensible, Una, four years younger, with large blue eyes and long and beautiful golden hair. Their poor mother was, I believe, naturally a light-hearted, sociable, high-spirited little creature,

and her gay and childish nature pined in the isolation and gloom of her lot. At all events, she died young, and the children were left to the sole care of their melancholy and embittered father. In process of time the girls grew up, tradition says, beautiful. The elder was designed. for a convent. The younger, her father hoped to mate as nobly as her high blood and splendid beauty seemed to promise, if only the great game on which he had resolved to stake all succeeded. Chapter 2 The Fairies in the Castle

The Rebellion of 45 came, and Altour de Lacey was one of the few Irishmen implicated treasonably in that daring and romantic insurrection. Of course, there were warrants out against him, but he was not to be found. The young ladies indeed remained as heretofore in their father's Lonely House Inclair. But whether he had crossed the water or was still in Ireland was for some time unknown, even to them. In due course he was attained, and his little estate forfeited. It was a miserable catastrophe, a tremendous and beggarly waking up from a lifelong dream of returning principality. In due course the officers of the crown came down to take possession, and it behoved the young ladies to flit. Happily for them, the ecclesiastic I've mentioned,

was not quite so confident as their father of his winning back the magnificent patrimony of his ancestors. And by his advice, the daughters had been secured twenty pounds a year each under the marriage settlement of their parents, which was all that stood between this proud house and literal destitution. Late one evening, as some little boys from the village were returning from a ramble through the dark and devious glen of Capricullan, with their pockets laden with nuts and fronds, to their amazement and even terror, they saw a light streaming redly from the narrow windows of one of the towers overhanging the precipice among the ivy and the lofty branches across the glen, already dim in the shadows of the deepening night.

Look, look, look, tis the focus tower, was the general cry in the vernacular, Irish, and a universal scamper commenced. The bed of the glen, strewn with great fragments of rock among which rose the tall stems of ancient trees and overgrown with the tangled copse, was at the best no favorable ground for a run. Now it was dark, and terrible work breaking through brambles and hazels, and tumbling over rocks. Little Shane Mul Ryan, the last of the panic route, screaming to his mates to wait for him,

saw a whitish figure emerge from the thicket at the base of the stone flight of steps that descended the side of the glen, close by the castle wall, intercepting his flight, and a discordant male voice shrieked. I have you At the same time the boy with a cry of terror tripped and tumbled and felt himself Roughly caught by the arm And hauled to his feet with a shake

A wild yell from the child And a volley of terror and entreaty followed Who is it, Larry? What's the matter? cried a voice high in the air from the turret window The words floated down through the trees Clear and sweet as the low notes of a flute Only a child my lady, a boy Is he hurt

Are you hurted? demanded the whitish man who held him fast and repeated the question in Irish, but the child only kept blubbering and crying for mercy with his hands clasped and trying to drop on his knees. Larry's strong old hand held him up. He was hurt and bleeding from over his eye. Just a trifle hurted, my lady.

Bring him up here. Shane Mulrion gave himself over. He was among the good people, who he knew would keep him prisoner forever and a day. There was no good in resisting. He grew bewildered and yielded himself passively to his fate, and emerged from the glen on the platform above. His captors knotted old hand still on his arm,

and looked round on the tall, mysterious trees, and the gray front of the castle, revealed in the imperfect moonlight as upon the scenery of a dream. The old man who, with thin wiry legs, walked by his side in a dingy white coat and blue facings and great pewter buttons, with his silver-gray hair, escaping from under his battered three-cocked hat,

and his shrewd, puckered, resolute face in which the boy could read no promise of sympathy, showing so white and phantom-like in the moonlight, was, as he thought, the incarnate ideal of a fairy. This figure led him in silence under the great arched gateway, and across the grass-grown court, to the door in the far angle of the building, and so, in the dark, round and round up a stone-screw stair,

and with a short turn into a large room with a fire of turf and wood, burning on its long unused hearth over which hung a pot, and about it an old woman with a great wooden spoon was busy. An iron candlestick supported their solitary candle, and about the floor of the room, as well as on the table and chairs, lay a litter of all sorts of things, piles of old faded hangings, boxes, trunks, clothes, pewter plates, and cups, and I know not what more. But what instantly engaged the fearful gaze of the boy were the figures of two ladies, red, druggott-drugged cloaks they had on, like the peasant girls of Munster and Connott. And the rest of their dress was pretty much in keeping, but they had the grand air, the refined expression and beauty,

and above all, the serene air of command that belonged to people of a higher rank. The elder with black hair and full brown eyes sat writing at the deal table on which the candle stood, and raised her dark gaze to the boy as he came in. The other, with her hood thrown back, beautiful and reunt, with a flood of wavy gold and, hair and great blue eyes, and with something kind and arch and strange in her countenance, struck him as the most wonderful beauty he could have imagined. They questioned the man in a language strange to the child. It was not English, for he had a smattering of that, and the man's story seemed to amuse them.

The two young ladies exchanged a glance, and smiled mysteriously. He was more convinced than ever that he was among the good people. The younger stepped gaily forward and said, "'Do you know who I am, my little man?' "'Well, I am the fairy Una, and this is my palace. "'And that fairy you see there,' "'pointing to the dark lady who was looking out something in a box, "'is my sister and family physician, the Lady Grivars.

"'And these, glancing at the old man and woman, "'are some of my courtiers, "'and I'm considering now what I shall do with you, "'whether I shall send you to Laugier, "'riding on a rush, "'to make my compliments to the Earl of Desmond "'in his enchanted castle, or straight to your bed, two thousand miles underground, among the gnomes,

or to prison in that little corner of the moon you see through the window. With the man in the moon for your jailer for thrice three hundred years in a day. There, don't cry. You only see how serious a thing it is for you, little boys to come so near my castle. Now for this once I'll let you go, but henceforward any boys I or my people may find within half a mile round my castle shall belong to me for life. I never behold their home or their people more.

And she sang a little air, and chased mystically half a dozen steps before him, holding out her cloak with her pretty fingers, and curtseying very low to his indescribable alarm. Then, with a little laugh, she said, My little man, we must minge your head. And so they washed his scratch, and the elder one applied a plaster to it, and she of the great blue eyes took out of her pocket a little French box of bonbons, and emptied it into his hand,

and she said, You need not be afraid to eat these. They are very good. And I'll sin my fairy, Blanc et blu, to set you free. Take him, she addressed Larry, and let him go with a solemn charge.

The elder, with a grave and affectionate smile, said, looking on the fairy, brave, dear wild, Una, nothing can ever quell your gaiety of heart. And Una kissed her merrily on the cheek. So the oak door of the room again opened, and Shane, with his conductor, descended the stair.

He walked with the scared boy in grim silence near halfway down the wild hillside toward Murrah, and then he stopped and said in Irish, "'You never saw the fairies before, my fine fella, "'and tisn't often those who once set eyes on us return to tell it. "'Whoever comes nearer night or day than this stone,' "'and he tapped it with the end of his cane, "'will never see his home again, for we'll keep him till the day of judgment. "'Good night, little, go soon, and away with you.'

"'So these young ladies, Alice and Una, with two old servants by their father's direction, had taken up their abode in a portion of that side of the old castle which overhung the glen, and with the furniture and hangings they had removed from their late residence, and with the aid of glass and the casements and some other indispensable repairs, and a thorough airing, they made the rooms they had selected just habitable as a rude and temporary shelter. Chapter 3 The Priest's Adventures in the Glen At first, of course, they saw or heard,

little of their father. In general, however, they knew that his plan was to procure some employment in France, and to remove them there. Their present strange abode was only an adventure and an episode, and they believed that any day they might receive instructions to commence their journey. After a little while the pursuit relaxed. The government, I believe, did not care, provided he did not obtrude himself, what became of him, or where he concealed himself. At all events the local authorities showed no disposition to hunt him down. The young lady's charges on the little forfeited property were paid without any dispute, and no vexatious inquiries were raised as to what had become of the furniture and other personal property,

which had been carried away from the forfeited house. The haunted reputation of the castle, for in those days in matters of the marvelous, the oldest were children, secured the little family in the seclusion they coveted, Once or sometimes twice a week, old Lawrence, with a shaggy little pony, made a secret expedition to the city of Limerick, starting before dawn and returning under the cover of night, with his purchases. There was beside an occasional sly moonlit visit from the old parish priest, and a midnight mass in the old castle for the little outlawed congregation. As the alarm and inquiry subsided, their father made them now and then a brief and stealth visit.

At first these were but of a night's duration, and with great precaution, but gradually they were extended and less guarded. Still he was, as the phrase is in Munster, on his keeping. He had firearms always by his bed, and had arranged places of concealment in the castle in the event of a surprise. But no attempt nor any disposition to molest him appearing, he grew more at ease, if not more cheerful. It came at last that he would sometimes stay so long as two whole months at a time

and then depart as suddenly and mysteriously as he came. I suppose he had always some promising plot on hand in his head full of ingenious treason, and lived on the sickly and exciting dietary of hope deferred. Was there a poetical justice in this, that the little menage thus secretly established in the solitary and time-worn pile, should have themselves experienced, but from causes not so easily explicable, those very supernatural perturbations which they had themselves essayed inspire. The interruption of the old priest's secret visits was the earliest consequence of the

mysterious interference, which now began to display itself. One night, having left his cob and care of his old sacristan in the little village, he trudged on foot along the winding pathway, among the gray rocks and ferns that threaded the glen, intending a ghostly visit to the fair recluses of the castle, and he lost his way in this strange fashion. There was moonlight indeed, but it was little more than quarter-moon, and a long train of funereal clouds were sailing slowly across the sky, so that, faint and wan as it was, the light seldom shone full out, and was often hidden for a minute or two altogether. When he reached the point in the glen where the castle stairs were wont to be, he could see nothing of them, and above no trace of the castle towers. So,

puzzled somewhat, he pursued his way up the ravine, wondering how his walk had become so unusually protracted and fatiguing. At last, sure enough, he saw the castle as plains could be, and a lonely streak of candlelight issuing from the tower just as usual, when his visit was expected. But he could not find the stair and had to clamber among the rocks and copsewood the best way he could. But when he emerged at top, there was nothing but the bare heath.

Then the clouds stole over the moon again, and he moved along with hesitation and difficulty, and once more he saw the outline of the castle against the sky. quite sharp and clear. But this time it proved to be a great battle-minted mass of cloud on the horizon. In a few minutes more he was quite close, all of a sudden, to the great front, rising gray and dim in the feeble light, and not till he could have struck it with his good oak wattle

did he discover it to be only one of those wild gray frontages of living rock that rise here and there in picturesque tears along the slopes of those solitary mountains. And so till dawn, pursuing this mirage of the castle. through pools and among ravines, he wore out a night of miserable misadventure and fatigue. Another night, riding up the glen so far as the level way at bottom would allow, and intending to make his nag fast as his customary tree, he hears on a sudden a horrid shriek at top of the steep rocks above his head,

and something. A gigantic human form, it seemed, came tumbling and bounding headlong down through the rocks, and fell with a fearful impetus just before his horse's hoofs. and there lay like a huge palpitating carcass. The horse was scared, as indeed was his rider too, and more so when this apparently lifeless thing sprang up to his legs, and throwing his arms apart to bar their further progress, advanced his white and gigantic face towards them.

Then the horse started about, with a snort of terror, nearly unseating the priest, and broke away into a furious and uncontrollable gallop. I need not recount all the strange and various misadventures which the honest priest sustained in his endeavors to visit the castle and its isolated tenants. They were enough to wear out his resolution and frighten him into submission. And so, at last, these spiritual visits quite ceased, and fearing to awaken inquiry and suspicion, he thought it only prudent to abstain from

attempting them in the daytime. So the young ladies of the castle were more alone than ever, their father whose visits were frequently of long duration, had of late ceased altogether to speak of their contemplated departure for France, grew angry at allusion to it, and they feared had abandoned the plan altogether. Chapter 4. The Light in the Bell Tower Shortly after the discontinuance of the priest's visits, Old Lawrence, one night, to his surprise, saw light issuing from a window in the bell tower. It was at first only a tremulous red ray, visible only for a few minutes, which seemed to pass from the room, through whose window it

escaped upon the courtyard of the castle, and so to lose itself. This tower encasement were in the angle of the building, exactly confronting that in which the little outlawed family had taken up their quarters. The whole family were troubled at the appearance of this dull red ray from the chamber and the bell tower. Nobody knew what to make of it, but Lawrence, who had campaigned in Italy with his old master, the young lady's grandfather, the heavens be his bed this night, was resolved to see it out, and took his great horse pistols with him and ascended to the corridor leading to the tower. But his search was in vain. This light left a sense of great uneasiness among the inmates,

and most certainly it was not pleasant to suspect the establishment of an independent and possibly dangerous lodger or even colony within the walls of the same old building. The light very soon appeared again, steadier and somewhat brighter, in the same chamber. Again old Lawrence buckled on his armor, swearing ominously. to himself, and this time bent in earnest upon conflict. The young ladies watched in thrilling suspense from the great window in their stronghold, looking diagonally across the court. But as Lawrence, who had entered the massive range of buildings opposite,

might be supposed to be approaching the chamber from which this ill-omened glare proceeded, it steadily waned, finally disappearing altogether, just a few seconds before his voice was heard shouting from the arched window to know which way the light had gone. This lighting up of the great chamber of the bell tower grew at last to be of frequent and almost continual recurrence. It was there, long ago, in times of trouble and danger, that the Delaces of those evil days used to sit in futile judgment upon captive adversaries,

and, as tradition alleged, often gave them no more time for shrift and prayer than it needed to mount the battlement of the turret overhead from which they were forthwith hung by the necks. for a caveat and admonition to all evil-disposed persons viewing the same from the country beneath. Old Lawrence observed these mysterious glimmerings with an evil and an anxious eye, and many in various were the stratagems he tried, but in vain to surprise the audacious intruders. It is, however, I believe a fact that no phenomenon, no matter how startling at first, if prosecuted with tolerable regularity and unattended with any new circumstances of terror,

will very long continue to excite alarm or even wonder. So the family came to acquiesce in this mysterious light. No harm accompanied it, old Lawrence, as he smoked his lonely pipe in the grass-grown courtyard, would cast a disturbed glance at it, as it softly glowed out through the darking aperture, and mutter a prayer or an oath. But he had given over the chase as a hopeless business,

and Peggy Sullivan, the old dame of all work, when by chance, for she never willingly looked toward the haunted quarter, she caught the faint reflection of its dull effulgence with the corner of her eye, would sign herself at the cross or fumble at her beads, and deeper furrows would gather in her forehead and her face grow ashen and perturbed. And this was not mended by the levity, with which the young ladies with whom the spectre had lost his influence, familiarity as usual, breeding contempt, had come to talk and even to jest about it. Chapter 5. The man would declare a mark.

But as the former excitement fly, old Peggy Sullivan produced a new one, for she solemnly avowed that she had seen a thin-faced man, with an ugly red mark all over the side of his cheek, looking out of the same window, just at sunset before the young ladies returned from their evening walk. This sounded in their ears like an old woman's dream, but still it was an excitement, jocular in the morning, and just perhaps a little fearful as night overspread the vast and desolate building, but still not wholly unpleasant.

This little flicker of credulity suddenly, however, blazed up into the full light of conviction. Old Lawrence, who was not given to dreaming and had a cool, hard head and an eye like a hawk, saw the same figure just about the same hour when the last level gleam of sunset was tinting the summits of the towers and the tops of the tall trees that surrounded them. He had just entered the court from the great gate, when he heard all at once the hard, peculiar Twitter of alarm, which sparrows make when a cat or a hawk invades their safety, rising all round from the thick ivy that overclimmed the wall on his left, and raising his eyes listlessly he saw, with a sort of shock, a thin, ungainly man, standing with his legs crossed in the recess

of the window from which the light was wont to issue, leaning with his elbows on the stone mullion, and looking down with a sort of sickly sneer, his hollow yellow cheeks being deeply stained on one side with what is called a claret mark. I have you at last, you villain, cried Larry, in a strange rage and panic. Drop down out of that on the grass here. I'll give yourself up, or I'll shoot you.

The thread was backed with an oath, and he drew from his coat pocket, the long holster pistol he was wont to carry, and covered his men cleverly. I'll give you all I count ten. One, two, three, four. If you draw back, I'll fire, mind. Five, six, you'd better be lively.

seven, eight, nine, one chance more. Will you come down? Then take it, ten. Bang, went the pistol. The sinister stranger was hardly fifteen feet removed from him, and Larry was a dead shot. But this time he made a scandalous miss, for the shot knocked a little white dust from the stone wall a full yard at one side, and the fellow never shifted his negligent posture or qualified his sardonic smile during the procedure. Larry was mortified and angry. not get off this time, my tulip, he said with a grin, exchanging the smoking weapon for the loaded pistol in reserve. What are your pistol in, Larry? said a familiar voice close by his window, and he saw his master,

accompanied by a handsome young man in a cloak. That villain, your order, in the window there. Why, there's nobody there, Larry, said to Lacey with a laugh, though that was no common indulgence with him. As Larry gazed, the figure somehow dissolved and broke up without receding, a hanging tuft of yellow and red ivy nodded queerly in place of the face. Some broken and discolored masonry in perspective took up the outline and coloring of the arms and figure, and two imperfect red and yellow lichen streaks carried on the curved tracing of the long spindle shanks. Larry blessed himself

and drew his hand across his damp forehead, over his bewildered eyes, and could not speak for a minute. It was all some devilish trick. He could take his oath he saw every feature in the fellow's face, the lace and buttons of his cloak and doublet. And even his long fingernails and thin yellow fingers that overhung the cross-shaft of the window where there was now nothing but a rusty stain left. The young gentleman who had arrived with Delacey stayed that night and shared with great apparent relish the homely fare of the family. He was a gay and gallant Frenchman, and the beauty of the younger lady in her pleasantry and spirit seemed to make his hours pass but too swiftly, and the moment of parting sad. When he had departed,

early in the morning. Altour de Lacey had a long talk with his elder daughter, while the younger was busy with her early dairy task, for among their retainers this prul generosa reckoned a kind little carry-cow. He told her that he had visited France since he had been last at Capricolin, and how good and gracious their sovereign had been, and how he had arranged a noble alliance for her sister Una. The young gentleman was of high blood,

and though not rich had nevertheless his acres and his nom de terre, besides the captain's rank in the army. He was, in short, the very gentleman with whom they had parted only that morning. On what special business he was now in Ireland there was no necessity that he should speak, but being here he had brought him hither to present him to his daughter, and found that the impression she had made was quite what was desirable. You know, dear Alice, or promise to a conventional life. I'd have been otherwise.

He hesitated for a moment. You are right, dear father? she said, kissing his hand, I am so promised, and no earthly tie or allurement has power to draw of me from that holy engagement. Well, he said,

returning her caress, I do not mean to urge you upon that point. It must not, however, be until Una's marriage has taken place. That cannot be for many good reasons. Sooner than this time twelve months, we shall then exchange this, strange and barbarous abode for Paris.

Where are many eligible convents in which are entertained and his sisters, some of the noblest ladies of France, and thereto in Una's marriage will be continued, though not the name at all events the blood, the lineage and the title which, so sure as justice ultimately governs the course of human events, will again be established, powerful, and honored in this country, the scent of their ancient glory and transitory misfortunes. Meanwhile, we must not mention this engagement to Una. Here she runs no risk of being sought her one, but the mere knowledge that her hand was absolutely pledged might excite a capricious

opposition, and repining such as neither I nor you would like to see, therefore be secret. The same evening he took Alice with him for a ramble round the castle wall, while they talked of grave matters, and he, as usual, allowed her a dim and doubtful view of some of those cloud-built castles in which he habitually dwelt, and among which his jaded hopes revived. They were walking upon a pleasant short sword of darkest green, on one side overhung by the gray castle walls, and on the other by the forest trees that here and there closely approached it. When precisely as they turned the angle of the bell tower, they were encountered by a person walking directly towards them. The sight of a stranger, with the exception of the one visitor introduced by her father, was in this place so absolutely unprecedented that Alice was amazed and affrighted to such a degree that for a moment she stood, stock still. But there was more in this apparition to excite unpleasant emotions than the mere

circumstance of its unexpectedness. The figure was very strange, being that of a tall, lean, ungainly man, dressed in a dingy suit, somewhat of a Spanish fashion, with a brown-laced cloak and faded red stockings. He had long, length legs, long arms, hands, and fingers, and a very long sickly face with a drooping nose and a sly sarcastic leer, and a great purplish stain. over spreading more than half of one cheek. As he strode past, he touched his cap with his thin discolored fingers, and an ugly side-glance, and disappeared round the corner. The eyes of father and daughter followed him in silence. Altour de Lacey seemed first absolutely terror-stricken, and then suddenly, inflamed with ungovernable fury. He dropped his cane

on the ground, drew his rapier, and without wasting a thought on his daughter, pursued. He had just had a glimpse of the retreating figure as it discerved. appeared round the far angle. The plume and the lank hair, the point of the rapier scabbard, the flutter of the skirt of the cloak, and one red stocking and heel, and this was the last he saw of him. When Alice reached his side, his drawn sword still in his hand, he was in a state of abject agitation. "'Take heaven, he's gone,' she exclaimed. "'He's gone,' echoed Ulter, with a strange glare.

"'And you are safe,' she added, clasping his hand. He sighed a great sigh. And you don't think he's coming back? He? Who? The stranger who passed us but now. Do you know him, father? Yes, and no, child. I know him not. Yeah, I know him too well.

Would to heaven we could leave this a curse at haunt tonight. Cursed be the stupid malice that first provoked this horrid feud, which no sacrifice and misery can appease, and no exorcism can quell or even suspend. The wretch has come from afar With a sure instinct to devour my last hope To dog us into our last retreat And to blast with his triumph

The very dust and ruins of our house What ails that stupid priest That he has given over his visits Are my children to be left without mass or confession The sacraments which guard as well as save Because once he loses his way in a mist Or mistakes a streak of foam in the brook For a dead man's face

Damn him See Alice if he won't come, he resumed. You must only write your confession to a man full. You and Una. Lawrence is trusty, and we'll carry it, and we'll get the bishops, or, if need be, the Pope's leave for him to give you absolution. I'll move heaven and earth, but you shall have the sacraments, poor children, and see him. I've been a wild fellow in my youth, I never pretended to a sanctity, but I know there's but one safe way, and, and keep you each a bit of this.

He opened a small silver box About you while you stay here Fold and sew it up reverently At a bit of the old sultory parchment And wear it next to your hearts Tis a fragment of the consecrated wafer And will help with the saint's protection To guard you from harm

And be strict in fasts and constant prayer I can do nothing Nor devise any help The curse has followed indeed on me And mine And Alice saw in silence The tears of despair roll down his pale and agitated face.

This adventure was also a secret, and Una was to hear nothing of it. Chapter 6. Voices Now Una, nobody knew why, began to lose spirit and to grow pale. Her fun and frolic were quite gone. Even her songs ceased. She was silent with her sister and loved solitude better. She said she was well, and quite happy, and could in no wise be got to account for the lamentable change that had stolen over her.

She had grown odd to, an obstinate in trifles, and strangely reserved in cold. Alice was very unhappy in consequence. What was the cause of this estrangement? Had she offended her and how? But Una had never before-born resentment for an hour. What could have altered her entire nature so? Could it be the shadow and chill of coming insanity? Once or twice when her sister urged her with tears and entreaties

To disclose the secret of her changed spirits and demeanor She seemed to listen with a sort of silent wonder and suspicion And then she looked for a moment full upon her And seemed on the very point of revealing all But the earnest, dilated gaze stole downward to the floor And subsided into an odd wily smile And she began to whisper to herself And the smile and the whisper were both a mystery to Alice

She and Alice slept in the same place bedroom, a chamber in a projecting tower, which on their arrival, when poor Una was so merry, they had hung round with old tapestry, and decorated fantastically according to their skill and frolic. One night as they went to bed, Una said, as if speaking to herself, "'Tis my last night in this room. I shall sleep no more with Alice.' "'And what has poor Alice done, Una, to deserve your strange unkindness?' Una looked on her curiously and half frightened, and then the odd smile stole over her face like a gleam of moonlight.

My poor Alice, what have you to do with it? She whispered, and why do you talk of sleeping no more with me? said Alice. Why, Alice, dear, no why, no reason, only a knowledge that it must be so, or Uno will die. Die, Una, darling. What can you mean? Yes, sweet Alice, die, indeed. We must all die sometime, you know, or undergo a change, and my time is near, very near, unless I sleep apart from you.

"'Indeed, Ona, sweetheart, I think you are ill, but not near death.' "'Oona knows what you think, wise Alice, but she's not mad. On the contrary, she's wiser than other folks.' "'She's sadder and stranger, too,' said Alice tenderly. "'Knowledge is sorrow,' answered Ona, and she looked across the room through her golden hair which she was combing, and through the window, beyond which lay the tops of great trees and the still foliage of the glen and the misty moonlight.

"'Tis enough, Alice, dear. It must be so. The bed must move hence, "'or Una's bed will be low enough ere long. See, it shan't be far, though, only into that small room.' She pointed to an inner room or closet opening from that in which they lay. The walls of the building were hugely thick, and there were double doors of oak between the chambers, and Alice thought, with a sigh, how completely separated they were going to be. However, she offered no opposition. The change was made in the girls for the first time since childhood lay in separate chambers. A few nights afterward, Alice, awoke late in the night from a dreadful dream,

in which the sinister figure which she and her father had encountered in their ramble round the castle walls bore principal part. When she awoke there were still in her ears the sounds which had mingled in her dream. They were the notes of a deep, ringing, bass voice rising from the glen beneath the castle walls. something between humming and singing, listlessly unequal and intermittent, like the melody of a man, whiling away the hours over his work.

While she was wondering at this unwanted minstrelsy, there came a silence and, could she believe her ears? It certainly was Una's clear, low contralto, softly singing a bar or two from the window. Then, once more silence. And then again the strange, manly voice, faintly chanting from the leafy abyss,

With a strange wild feeling of suspicion and terror, Alice glided to the window. The moon who sees so many things and keeps all secrets with her cold, impenetrable smile, was high in the sky. But Alice saw the red flicker of a candle from Una's window, and, she thought, the shadow of her head against the deep sidewall of its recess. Then this was gone, and there were no more sights or sounds that night. As they sated at breakfast, the small birds were singing merrily from among the small birds. sun-tipped foliage. I love this music, said Alice, unusually pale and sad. It comes with the pleasant light of morning.

I remember Una, when you used to sing like those gay birds, in the fresh beams of the morning. That was in the old time when Una kept no secret from poor Alice. And Una knows what her sage Alice means, but there are other birds, silent, all day long, and they say the sweetest two that love to sing by night alone. So things went on. The elder girl, pained in melancholy, the younger silent, changed, and unaccountable.

A little while after this, very late one night, on awaking, Alice heard a conversation being carried on in her sister's room. There seemed to be no disguise about it. She could not distinguish the words, indeed, the walls being some six feet thick, and two great oak doors intercepting. But Una's clear voice in the deep bell-like tones of the unknown made up the dialogue. Alice sprung from her bed, through her clothes about her, and tried to enter her sister's room, but the inner door was bolted. The voices ceased to speak as she knocked, and Una opened it and stood before her in her nightdress candle in hand. Una, una, darling, as you hope for peace, tell me who is here, cried the frightened Alice,

with her trembling arms about her neck. Una drew back, with her large, innocent blue eyes fixed full upon her. Come in, Alice, she said coldly. And in came Alice with a fearful glance around. There was no hiding place there. A chair, a table, a little bedstead, and two or three pegs in the wall to hang clothes on. A narrow window, with two iron bars across. No hearth or chimney.

Nothing but bare walls. Alice looked round in amazement, and her eyes glanced with painful inquiry into those of her sisters. Una smiled one of her peculiar sidelong smiles and said, strange dreams. I've been dreaming. So has Alice. She hears and sees owner's dreams and wonders. And, well, she may. And she kissed her sister's cheek with a cold kiss, and lay down in her little bed, her slender hand under her head, and spoke no more. Alice, not knowing what to think, went back to hers. About this time, Altor Delacey returned. He heard his elder daughter's strange narrative

with marked uneasiness, and his agitation seemed to grow rather than subsist. side. He enjoined her, however, not to mention it to the old servant, nor in presence of anybody she might chance to see, but only to him, and to the priest, if he could be persuaded to resume his duty in return. The trial, however, such as it was, could not endure very long. Matters had turned out favorably. The union of his young daughter might be accomplished within a few months, and in eight or nine weeks they should be on their way to Paris. A night or two after her father's arrival, Alice, in the dead of night, heard the well-known strange deep voice speaking softly, as it seemed close to her own window on the outside, and Una's voice, clear and tender,

spoken answer. She hurried to her own casement and pushed it open, kneeling in the deep embrasure, and looking with a stealthy and affrighted gaze towards her sister's window. As she crossed the floor of the voices subsided, and she saw a light withdrawn from within, The moonbeams slanted bright and clear On the whole side of the castle Overlooking the glen And she plainly beheld the shadow of a man Projected on the wall as on a screen

This black shadow recalled with a horrid thrill The outline and fashion of the figure In the Spanish dress There were the cap and mantle The rapier, the long thin limbs And sinister angularity It was so thrown obliquely That the hands reached to the window sill

And the feet stretched and stretched longer and longer as she looked toward the ground and disappeared in the general darkness, and the rest, with a sudden flicker, shot downwards, as shadows will on the sudden movement of a light, and was lost in one gigantic leap down the castle wall. I do not know whether I dream or wake when I hear and see these sights, but I will ask my father to sit up with me, and we too surely cannot be mistaken.

May the Holy Saints keep in guard us. And in her terror she buried her head under her. the bedclothes and whispered her prayers for an hour. Chapter 7. Unas' love. I have been with Father Dennis, said Delacey next day. And he will come tomorrow, and think heaven. You may both make your confession and hear Mass, and my mind will be at rest. And you'll find poor Oona, happier and more like herself. But, tween cup and lip, there's many a slip. The priest was not destined to hear poor

Una's shrift. When she bid her sister good night, she looked on her with her large, cold, wild eyes, till something of her old human affections seemed to gather there, and they slowly filled with tears, which dropped one after the other on her homely dress as she gazed in her sister's face. Alice delighted sprang up and clasped her arms about her neck. My own darling treasure, tis all over. You love your poor Alice again and will be happier than ever. But while she held her in her embrace, Una's eyes were. were turned towards the window, and her lips apart, and Alice felt instinctively that her thoughts were already far away. Hark, listen, hush. And Una, with her delighted gaze fixed, as if she saw

far away beyond the castle wall, the trees, the glen, and the night's dark curtain, held her hand raised near her ear, and waved her head slightly in time as it seemed, to music that reached not Alice's ear, and smiled her strange, pleased smile. And then the smile slowly faded away, leaving that sly, suspicious light behind it, which somehow scared her sister, with an uncertain sense of danger. And she sang in tones so sweet and low that it seemed but a reverie of a song, recalling as Alice fancied, the strain to which she had just listened in that strange ecstasy, the plaintive and beautiful Irish ballad, shul, shul, shul, Arun, the midnight summons of the outlawed Irish soldier to his darling to follow him.

Alice had slept little the night before. She was now overpowered with fatigue, and leaving her candle burning by her bedside she fell into a deep sleep. From this she awoke suddenly and completely, as will sometimes happen without any apparent cause, and she saw Una come into the room. She had a little purse of embroidery, her own work in her hand, and she stole lightly to the bedside,

with her peculiar, oblique smile and evidently thinking that her sister was asleep. Alice was thrilled with a strange terror and did not speak or move, and her sister slipped her hand softly under her bolster and withdrew it. Then Una stood for a while by the hearth, and stretched her hand up to the mantelpiece from which she took a little bit of chalk, and Alice thought she saw her place it in, the fingers of a long yellow hand that was stealthily introduced

from her own chamber door to receive it. and Una paused in the dark recess of the door and smiled over her shoulder toward her sister and then glided into her room closing the doors almost freezing with terror Alice rose and glided after her and stood in her chamber screaming

Una Una in heaven's name what troubles you But Una seemed to have been sound asleep in her bed And raised herself for the start And looking upon her with a peevisholed surprise, said, What does Alice seek here? You were in my room, Una, dear.

You seem disturbed and troubled. Dreams, Alice. My dreams cross in your brain. Only dreams, dreams. Get you to bed and sleep. And to bed she went. But not to sleep. She lay awake more than an hour,

and then Una emerged once more from her room. This time she was fully dressed and had her cloak and thick shoes on, as their rattle on the floor plainly discovered. She had a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief in her hand, and her hood was drawn about her head, and thus equipped as it seemed. For a journey, she came and stood at the foot of Alice's bed,

and stared on her with a look so solaced and terrible that her senses almost forsook her. Then she turned and went back into her own chamber. She may have returned, but Alice thought not. At least she did not see her. But she lay in great excitement and perturbation, and was terrified about an hour later by a not at her chamber door. Not that opening into Una's room, but upon the little passage from the

stone-screw staircase. She sprang from her bed, but the door was secured on the inside, and she felt relieved. The knock was repeated, and she heard someone laughing softly on the outside. The morning came at last. That dreadful night was over. But Una, where was Una? Alice never saw her more. On the head of her empty bed were traced in chalk the words. Ultur Delacey, alter O'Donnell, and Alice found beneath her own pillow the little purse of embroidery she had seen in Una's hand. It was her little parting token, and bore the simple legend, Una's love. Delacey's rage and horror were boundless. He charged the priests in frantic language with having exposed his child by his cowardice and neglect to the machinations of the fiend,

and raved and blasphemed like a man demented. It is said that he procured a solemn exorcism to be performed in the hope of disenthralling and recovering his daughter. Several times it is alleged she was seen by the old servants. Once on a sweet summer morning in the window of the tower, she was perceived combing her beautiful golden tresses and holding a little mirror in her hand. And first, when she saw herself discovered, she looked affrighted, and then smiled, her slanting, cunning smile. Sometimes, too, in the glen by moonlight, it was said that belated villagers had met her, always startled first, and then smiling, generally singing snatches of old Irish ballads

that seemed to bear a sort of dim resemblance to her melancholy fate. The apparition has long ceased, but it is said that now and again, perhaps, once in two or three years, late on a summer night you may hear, but faint and far away in the recesses of the glen, the sweet, sad notes of Una's voice, singing those plaintive melodies.

This too, of course, in time will cease, and all be forgotten. Chapter 8 Sister Agnes and the portrait When Ultor de Lacey died, His daughter, Alice, found among his effects, a small box, containing a portrait such as I have described. When she looked on it, she recoiled in horror. There, in the plenitude of its sinister peculiarities,

was faithfully portrayed, the phantom which lived with a vivid and horrible accuracy in her remembrance. Membrance. Folded in the same box was a brief narrative, stating that, AD 1601, in the month of December, Walter Delacey, of Capricullen, made many prisoners at the Ford of Owen Hay, or Abingdon, of Irish and Spanish soldiers, flying from the great overthrow of the rebel powers at Kinsale, and among the number one Roderick O'Donnell, an arched traitor, and near kinsman to that other O'Donnell who led the rebels, who claiming kindred through his mother to Delacey, sued for his life with instant and miserable entreaty, and offered great ransom,

but was by Delacey, through great zeal for the queen, as some thought cruelly put to death. When he went to the tower top, where was the gallows, finding himself in extremity and no hope of mercy, he swore that though he could work them no evil before his death, yet that he would devote himself thereafter to blast the greatness of the Delacies, and never leave them till his work was done. he hath been seen often since, and always for that family perniciously, insomuch that it hath been the custom to show to young children of that lineage,

the picture of the said O'Donnell, and little taken among his few valuables, to prevent there being misled by him unawares, so that he should not have his will, who by devilish wiles and hell-born cunning hath steadfastly sought the ruin of that ancient house, and especially to leave that stymage, irosum, destitute of issue for the transmission of their pure blood and worshipful name.

Old Miss Croker of Ross House, who was near 70 in the year 1821 when she related this story to me, had seen and conversed with Alice Delacey, a professed nun under the name of Sister Agnes in a religious house in King Street in Dublin, founded by the famous Duchess of Tyreconnell, and had the narrative from her own lips. I thought the tale worth preserving and have no more to say. End of Section 10, Altour de Lacey Section 11 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery By J. Sheridan LaFanue The Sliberovic recordings in the public domain read by Ben Tucker.

The Vision of Tom Chuff, anonymous and all the year-round 1870, a variation on The Drunker's Dream in the Purcell Papers from Dublin University Magazine 1838. At the edge of melancholy Katstein Moore, in the north of England, with half a dozen ancient poplar trees with rugged and hoary stems around, one smashed across the middle by a flash of lightning thirty summers before, and all their great height dwarfing the abode near which they stand, there squats a rude stone house with a thick chimney, a kitchen and a bedroom on the ground floor, and a loft accessible by a ladder under the shingle roof, divided into two rooms. its owner was a man of ill repute Tom Chuff was his name, a shock-headed, broad-shouldered, powerful man, though somewhat short, with lowering brows and a sullen eye. He was a poacher, and hardly made an ostensible pretense of earning his bread by any honest industry.

He was a drunkard, he beat his wife, and led his children a life of terror and lamentation. When he was at home, it was a blessing to his frightened little family when he absented himself as he, he sometimes did for a week or more together. On the night I speak of, he knocked at the door with his cudgel at about eight o'clock. It was winter and the night was very dark. Had the summons men that of a bogey from the moor, the inmates of this small house could hardly have heard it with greater terror. His wife unbarred the door in fear and haste.

Her hunched-backed sister stood by the hearth, staring toward the threshold. The children cowered behind. Tom Chuff entered with his cudgel in his hand, without speaking, and threw himself into a chair opposite the fire. He had been away two or three days. He looked haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. They knew he had been drinking. Tom raked and knocked the peat fire with his stick and thrust his feet close to it.

He signed towards the little dresser and nodded to his wife, and she knew he wanted a cup, which in silence she gave him. He pulled a bottle of gin from his coat pocket and nearly filling the tea cup, drank off the dram at a few gulps. He usually refreshed himself with two or three drams of this kind before beating the inmates of his house. His three little children, cowering in a corner, eyed him from under a table, as Jack did the ogre in the nursery tale. His wife, Nell, standing behind a chair, which she was ready to snatch up to meet the blow of the cudgel, which might be leveled at her at any moment, never took her eyes off him,

and hunched-backed Mary showed the whites of a large pair of eyes, similarly employed as she stood against the oaken press, her dark face, hardly distinguishable in the distance from the brown panel behind it. Tom Chuff was at his third dram, and had not yet spoken a word since his entrance, and the suspense was growing dreadful when, on a sudden, he leaned back in his rude seat. The cudgel slipped from his hand, a change, and a death-like pallor came over his face. For a while they all stared on. Such was their fear of him. They dared not speak or move, lest it should prove to have been but a doze, and Tom should wake up and proceed forthwith to gratify.

his temper and exercise his cudgel. In a very little time, however, things began to look so odd that they ventured his wife and Mary to exchange glances full of doubt and wonder. He hung so much over the side of the chair that if it had not been one of cyclopean clumsiness and weight, he would have borne it to the floor.

A leaden tint was darkening the pallor of his face. They were becoming alarmed. And finally, braving everything, his wife timidly said, Tom, and then more sharply repeated it. And finally, cried the appellate, loudly, and again and again, with the terrified accompaniment. He's dying! He's dying! Her voice, rising to a scream as she found that neither it nor her plucks and shakings of him by the shoulder had the slightest effect

in recalling him from his torpor. And now from sheer terror of a new kind, the children added their shrilly piping to the talk and cries of their seniors, and if anything could have called Tom up from his lethargy, it might have been the piercing chorus that made the rude chamber of the poacher's habitation ring again. But Tom continued unmoving. moved, deaf and sterless. His wife sent Mary down to the village, hardly a quarter of a mile away, to implore of the doctor,

for whose family she did duty as laundress, to come down and look at her husband who seemed to be dying. The doctor, who was a good-natured fellow, arrived. With his hat still on, he looked at Tom, examined him, and when he found that the emetic he had brought with him on conjecture from Mary's description did not act,

and that his lancet brought no blood, and that he felt a pulseless wrist, he shook his head and inwardly thought. What the plague is the woman crying for Could she have desired a greater blessing for her children And herself than the very thing that has happened? Tom, in fact, seemed quite gone. At his lips no breath was perceptible.

The doctor could discover no pulse. His hands and feet were cold, and the chill was stealing up into his body. The doctor, after a stay of twenty minutes, had buttoned up his great coat again and pulled down his hat and told Mrs. Chuff that there was no use in his remaining any longer when all of a sudden a little rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet cut in Tom Chuff's temple. That's very odd, said the doctor.

Let us wait a little. I must describe now the sensations which Tom Chuff had experienced. With his elbows on his knees and his chin upon his hands, he was staring into the embers with his gin beside him, when suddenly a swimming came in his head. He lost sight of the fire and a sound like one stroke of a loud church bell smote his brain. Then he heard a confused humming, and the leaden weight of his head held him backward as he sank in his chair, and consciousness quite forsook him. When he came to himself,

he felt chilled, and was leaning against a huge leafless tree. The night was moonless, and when he looked up, he thought he had never seen stars so large and bright, or sky so black. The stars, too, seemed to blink down with longer intervals of darkness and fiercer and more dazzling emergence, and something, he vaguely thought, of the character of silent menace and fury. He had a confused recollection of having come there, or rather, of having been carried along as if on men's shoulders with a sort of rushing motion. But it was utterly indistinct, the imperfect recollection simply of a sensation. He had seen or heard nothing on his way.

He looked round. There was not a sign of a living creature near. and he began with a sense of awe to recognize the place. The tree against which he had been leaning was one of the noble old beaches that surround at irregular intervals, the churchyard of Shackleton, which spreads its green and wavy lap on the edge of the moor of Katstein, at the opposite side of which stands the rude cottage in which he had just lost consciousness. It was six miles or more across the moor to his habitation,

and the black expanse lay before him, disappearing dismally in the darkness, so that, looking straight before him, sky and land, blended together in an undistinguishable and awful blink. There was a silence quite unnatural over the place. The distant murmur of the brook, which he knew so well was dead. Not a whisper in the leaves above him. The air, earth, everything about and above was indescribably still, and he experienced that quaking of the heart that seems to portend the approach of something awful.

He would have set out upon his return across the moor. had he not an undefined presentiment that he was waylaid by something he dared not pass. The old grey church and tower of Shackleton stood like a shadow in the rear. His eye had grown accustomed to the obscurity and he could just trace its outline. There were no comforting associations in his mind connected with it,

nothing but menace and misgiving. His early training and his lawless calling was connected with this very spot. Here his father used to meet two other poachers and bring his son, then, but a boy with him. Under the church porch, towards morning, they used to divide the game they had taken,

and take account of the sales they had made on the previous day, and make partition of the money, and drink their gin. It was here he had taken his early lessons in drinking, cursing, and lawlessness. His father's grave was hardly eight steps from the spot where he stood. In his present state of awful dejection, no scene on earth could have so helped to heighten his fear. There was one object close by, which added to his gloom.

About a yard away and rear of the tree behind himself and extending to his left was an open grave. The mold and rubbish piled on the other side. At the head of this grave stood the beech tree. Its columnar's stem rose like a huge monumental pillar. He knew every line increase on its smooth surface. The initial letters of his own name,

cut in its bark long ago, had spread out and wrinkled like the grotesque capitals of a fanciful engraver. And now with a synodernet of a fanciful engraver. Mr.'s significance overlooked the open grave, as if answering his mental question. Who, four, to grave cut? He felt still a little stunned, and there was a faint tremor in his joints, that disinclined him to exert himself.

And further, he had a vague apprehension that take what direction he might. There was danger around him worse than that of staying where he was. On a sudden, the stars began to blink more fiercely, a faint, wild light overspread for a minute the bleak landscape, and he saw approaching from the moor a figure at a kind of swinging trot, with now and then a zigzag hop or two, such as men accustomed to cross such places make, to avoid the patches of slob or quag that meet them here and there. This figure resembled his father's, and like him, whistled through his finger by way of signal as he approached.

But the whistle sounded not now shrilly and sharp, as in old times, but immensely far away and seemed to sing strangely through Tom's head. From habit or from fear, in answer to the signal, Tom whistled as he used to do five and twenty years ago and more, although he was already chilled with an unearthly fear. Like his father, too, the figure held up the bag that was in his left hand as he drew near, when it was his custom to call out to him what was in it. It did not reassure the watcher, you may be certain,

when a shout unnaturally faint reached him, as the phantom dangled the bag in the air. And he heard with a faint distinctness the words, Tom Chuff's soul. Scarcely 50 yards away from the low churchyard fence at which Tom was standing, there was a wider chasm in the peat, which there threw up a growth of reeds and bulrushes, among which, as the old poacher used to do on a sudden alarm,

the approaching figure suddenly cast itself down. From the same patch of tall reeds and rushes emerged instantaneously what he at first mistook for the same figure creeping on all fours. but what he soon perceived to be an enormous black dog with a rough coat like a bears, which at first sniffed about, and then started toward him in what seemed to be a sportive amble, bouncing this way and that. But as it drew near, it displayed a pair of fearful eyes that glowed like live coals and emitted from the monstrous expanse of its jaws a terrifying growl.

This beast seemed on the point of seizing him, and Tom recoiled in panic and fell into the open grave behind him. The edge which he caught as he tumbled gave way, and down he went, expecting almost at the same instant to reach the bottom. But never was such a fall. Bottomless seemed the abyss. Down, down, down, with immeasurable and still increasing speed through utter darkness, with hair streaming straight upward, breathless. He shot with a rush of air against him, the force of which whirled up his very arms, second after second, minute after minute. through the chasm downward he flew, the icy perspiration of horror covering his body, and suddenly as he expected to be dashed into annihilation, his descent was, in an instant, arrested with a tremendous shock, which, however, did not deprive him of consciousness even for a moment.

He looked about him. The place resembled a smoke-stained cavern or catacomb, the roof of which, except for a ribbed arch here and there faintly visible, was lost in darkness. From several rude passages, like the galleries of a gigantic mine, which opened from the center chamber, was very dimly emitted a dull glow as of charcoal, which was the only light by which he could imperfectly discern the objects immediately about him. What seemed like a projecting piece of the rock, at the corner of one of these murky entrances, moved on a sudden, and proved to be a human figure that beckoned to him. He approached and saw his father. He could barely recognize him.

he was so monstrously altered. I've been looking for you, Tom. Welcome home, lad. Come along to your place. Tom's heart sank as he heard these words, which were spoken in a hollow, and he thought, derisive voice that made him tremble.

But he could not help accompany the wicked spirit, who led him into a place in passing, which he heard, as it were from within the rock, dreadful cries, and appeals for mercy. What is this? said he, "'Never mind. Who are they?

Newcomers, like yourself, lad,' answered his father apathetically. They give over that work in time, finding it is no use. "'What shall I do?' said Tom in an agony. "'It's all one.' "'But what shall I do?' reiterated Tom, quivering in every joint nerve. "'Read and Barrett, I suppose.' For God, sake, if ever you cared for me, as I am your own child, let me out of this. There's no way out.

If there's a way in, there's a way out, and for heaven's sake, let me out of this. But the dreadful figure made no further answer, and glided backwards by his shoulder to the rear, and others appeared in view, each with a faint red halo round it, staring on him with frightful eyes, images, all in hideous variety of eternal fury or derision. He was growing mad, it seemed, under the stair of so many eyes, increasing a number and drawing closer every moment. And at the same time, myriads and myriads of voices were calling him by his name, some far away, some near, some from one point, some from another, some from behind, close to his ears. These cries were increased in rapidity and multitude, and mingled with laughter,

with flitting blasphemies, with broken insults and mockeries, succeeded and obliterated by others before he could half-catch their meaning. All this time in proportion to the rapidity and urgency of these dreadful sights and sounds, the epilepsy of terror was creeping up to his brain, and with a long and dreadful scream, he lost consciousness. When he recovered his senses, he found himself in a small stone chamber, vaulted above, and with a ponderous door. A single point of light in the wall, with a strange brilliancy, illuminated this cell. Seated opposite to him, was a venerable man with a snowy beard of immense length, an image of all

awful purity and severity. He was dressed in a coarse robe with three large keys suspended from his girdle. He might have filled one's idea of an ancient porter of a city gate, such spiritual cities, I should say, as John Bunyan loved to describe. This old man's eyes were brilliant and awful, and fixed on him as they were. Tom Chuff felt himself helplessly in his power. At length he spoke. The command is given to let you forth for one trial more,

But if you are found again drinking with the drunken and beating your fellow servants, you shall return through the door by which you came, and go out no more. With these words, the old man took him by the wrist and led him through the first door. And then unlocking one that stood in the cavern outside, he struck Tom Chuff sharply on the shoulder, and the door shut behind him with a sound that boomed, peel after peal of thunder, near and far away, and all round and above, till it rolled off gradually into silence. silence. It was totally dark, but there was a fanning of fresh, cool air that overpowered him. He felt that he was in the upper world again. In a few minutes he began to hear voices which he knew,

and first a faint point of light appeared before his eyes, and gradually he saw the flame of the candle, and after that the familiar faces of his wife and children, and he heard them faintly when they spoke to him, although he was as yet unable to answer. He also saw the doctor, like an isolated figure in the dark, and heard him say, "'There now, you have him back. He'll do, I think.' His first words, when he could speak and saw clearly all around him, and felt the blood on his neck and shirt were, "'Oif, forget me, I'm a change man, sin for sir,'

which last phrase means, sin for the clergyman. When the vicar came and entered the little bedroom where the scared poacher, whose soul had died within him, was lying, still sick and weak in his bed and with a spirit that was prostrate with terror, Tom Chuff feebly beckoned the rest from the room, and the door being closed, the good parson heard the strange confession, and with equal amazement the man's earnest and agitated vows of amendment, and his helpless appeals to him for support and counsel.

These, of course, were kindly met, and the visits of the rector for some time were frequent. One day when he took Tom Chuff's hand on bidding him goodbye, The sick man held it still and said, "'You're a vicar of Shackleton, sir, "'and if I said thee, "'you'll promise me a thing, "'as I promised you many.

"'I said, I'll never give my wife, "'nor barn, no folk, "'or no sort, skilt nor sisip more, "'and you'll know of me no more among the sleepers. "'Nor never will Tom draw trigger, "'nor set a snare again, "'but in an honest way, "'and after that you'll know make it a boatless bane for me,

"'but being, as I say, vicar a shackleton, and able to do as your list. You'll know let them bury me twenty good, yearned ones, measure of the odd-beach trees that round the churchyard as Shackleton. I see you would have your grave when your time really comes, a good way from the place where lay the grave you dreamed of. That's just it. I'd like the bottom of a moral pit leafer,

and I'd be laid in another churchyard just to be shut on my fear of that, but that are my kins folks buried beyond in Shackleton, and you'll give me your promise and no break your word. I do promise, certainly. I'm not likely to outlive you, but if I should, and still be vicar of Shackleton, you shall be buried somewhere as near the middle of the churchyard as we can find space. That'll do. And so content, they parted.

The effect of the vision upon Tom Chuff was powerful and promised to be lasting. With a sore effort he exchanged his life of desultory adventure and comparative idleness, for one of regular industry. He gave up drinking. He was as kind as an originally surly nature would allow to his wife and family. He went to church, and fine weather they crossed the moor to Shackleton Church. The vicar said he came there to look at the scenery of his vision, and to fortify his good resolutions by the reminder.

Impressions upon the imagination, however, are but transitory, and a bad man acting under fear is not a free agent. His real character does not appear. But as the images of the imagination fade and the action of fear abates, the essential qualities of the man reassert themselves. So, after a time, Tom Chuff began to grow weary of his new life. He grew lazy, and people began to say that he was catching hairs and pursuing his old contraband way of life under the rose.

He came home one hard night with signs of the bottle in his thick speech and violent temper. Next day he was sorry or frightened at all the same. events, repentant, and for a week or more something of the old horror returned, and he was once more on his good behavior. But in a little time came a relapse, and another repentance, and then a relapse again, and gradually the return of old habits and the flooding in all of his old way of life, with more violence and gloom in proportion as the man was alarmed and exasperated by the remembrance of his despised but terrible warning. When the old life returned to the misery of the cottage. The smiles which had begun to appear with the unwanted sunshine were seen no more,

instead returned to his poor wife's face the old pale and heartbroken look. The cottage lost its neat and cheerful air, and the melancholy of neglect was visible. Sometimes at night were overheard by a chance passerby, cries and sobs from that ill-omened dwelling. Tom Chuff was now often drunk, and not very often at home except when he came in to sweep away his poor wife's earning. Tom had long lost sight of the honest old parson. There was shame mixed with his degradation. He had grace enough left when he saw the thin figure of to sir, walking along the road to turn out of his way and avoid meeting him.

The clergyman shook his head, and sometimes groaned when his name was mentioned. His horror and regret were more for the poor wife than for the relapsed sinner, for her case was pitiable indeed. Her brother, Jack Everton, coming over from Hexley, having heard stories of all this, determined to beat Tom for his ill treatment of his sister, within an inch of his life. Luckily, perhaps for all concerned, Tom happened to be away upon one of his long excursions, and poor Nell besought her brother, an extremity of terror not to interpose between them, so he took his leave and went home muttering and sulky. Now it happened a few months

later that Nellie Chuff fell sick. She had been ailing, as heartbroken people do, for a good while. But now the end had come. There was a coroner's inquest when she died, for the doctor had doubts as to whether a blow had not at least hastened her death. Nothing certain, however, came of the inquiry. Tom Chuff had left his home more than two days before his wife's death. He was absent upon his lawless business still, when the coroner had held his quest.

Jack Everton came over from Hexley to attend the dismal obsequies of his sister. He was more incensed than ever with the wicked husband, who, one way or other, had hastened Nellie's death. The inquest had closed early in the day. The husband had not appeared. An occasional companion, perhaps I ought to say, accomplice of Chuff's, happened to turn up. He had left him on the borders of Westmoreland and said he would probably be home next day, but Everton affected not to believe it.

Perhaps it was to Tom Chuff, he suggested, a secret satisfaction to crown the history of his bad married life with the scandal of his absence from the funeral of his neglected and abused wife. Everton had taken on himself the direction of the melancholy preparations. He had ordered a grave to be opened for his sister beside her mother's, in Shackleton Churchyard, at the other side of the moor. For the purpose, as I have said, of marking the callous neglect of her husband, he determined that the funeral should take place that night. His brother Dick had accompanied him,

and they and his sister, with Mary and the children, and a couple of the neighbors, formed the humble cortege. Jack Everton said he would wait behind, on the chance of Tom Chuff coming in time that he might tell him what had happened and make him cross the moor with him to meet the funeral. His real object, I think, was to inflict upon the villain the drubbing he had so long wished to give him.

Anyhow, he was resolved by crossing the moor to reach the churchyard in time to anticipate the arrival of the funeral, and to have a few words with the vicar, clerk, and sexton, all old friends of his for the parish of Shackleton was the place of his birth and early recollections. But Tom Chuff did not appear at his house that night, In surly mood and without a shilling in his pocket he was making his way homeward. His bottle of gin, his last investment, half-emptied with its neck protruding as usual on such returns, was in his coat pocket.

His way home lay across the moor of Katstein, and the point at which he best knew the passage was from the churchyard of Shackleton. He vaulted the low wall that forms its boundary, and strode across the graves, and over many a flat, half-buried tombstone toward the side of the churchyard, next Katstein moor. The old church of Shackleton and its tower rose, close at his right, like a black shadow against the sky. It was a moonless night, but clear. By this time he had reached the low boundary wall at the other side that overlooks the wide expanse of Katstein Moore. He stood by one of the huge old beech trees and leaned his back to its smooth trunk. Had he ever seen the sky look so black, and the stars shine out and blink so vividly. There was a death-like silence over the scene, like the hush that precedes thunder and sultry weather.

The expanse before him was lost in utter blackness. A strange quaking unnerved his heart. It was the sky and scenery of his vision, the same horror in misgiving, the same invincible fear of venturing from the spot where he stood. He would have prayed if he dared. His sinking heart demanded a restorative of some sort, and he grasped the bottle in his coat pocket, turning to his left, as he did so, he saw the piled up mold of an open grave

that gaped with its head close to the base of the great tree against which he was leaning. He stood aghast, his dream was returning and slowly enveloping him. Everything he saw was weaving itself into the texture of his vision. The chill of horror stole over him. A faint whistle came shrill and clear over the moor and he saw a figure approaching at a swinging trot with a zigzag course hopping now here,

and now there, as men do over a surface where one has need to choose their steps. Through the jungle of reeds and bulrushes in the foreground, this figure advanced, and with the same unaccountable impulse that had coerced him in his dream, he answered the whistle of the advancing figure. On that signal it directed its course straight toward him. It mounted the low wall, and standing there looked into the graveyard. Who made answer? challenged the newcomer from his post of observation.

"'Me,' answered Tom. "'Who are you?' repeated the man upon the wall. "'Tom Chuff, and who's this grave cut for?' he answered in a savage tone to cover the secret shudder of his panic. "'I'll tell you that, you villain,' answered the stranger descending from the wall. "'I looked for you far and there and waited long, and now you found at last.' Not knowing what to make of the figure that advanced upon him, Tom Chuff recoiled, stumbled, and fell backward into the open grave.

He caught at the sides as he fell, but without retarding his fall. An hour after, when lights came with the coffin, the corpse of Tom Chuff was found at the bottom of the grave. He had fallen direct upon his head and his neck was broken. His death must have been simultaneous with his fall. Thus far, his dream was accomplished. It was his brother-in-law who had crossed the moor and approached the churchyard of Shackleton, exactly in the line which the image of his father had seemed to take in his strange vision. Fortunately for Jack Everton, the sexton and clerk of Shackleton Church, were unseen by him crossing the churchyard toward the grave of Nellie Chuff, just as Tom the poacher stumbled and fell.

Suspicion of direct violence would otherwise have inevitably attached to the exasperated brother. As it was, the catastrophe was followed by no legal consequences. The good vicar kept his word, and the grave of Tom Chuff is still pointed out by the old inhabitants of Shackleton, pretty nearer. in the center of the churchyard. This conscientious compliance with the entreaty of the panic-stricken man as to the place of his sepulture gave a horrible and mocking emphasis to the strange combination by which fate had defeated his precaution and fixed the place of his death.

The story was, for many a year, and we believe it still is, told round many a cottage hearth, and though it appeals to what many would term superstition, it yet sounded in the ears of a rude and simple audience, a thrilling and, let us hope, not altogether fruitless homily. End of Section 11, The Vision of Tom Chuff. Section 12 of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheridan LaFenou.

The Slibervox Recordings in the Public Domain, read by Ben Tucker. Stories of Lao Gear Anonymous in all the year-round, 186970. It differs from the other tales in this volume in being apparently a record, of stories actually told to La Funu, and not invented by him, and they purport to be, as the phrase goes, veridical. When the present writer was a boy of twelve or thirteen, he first made the acquaintance of Miss Anne Bailey of Laugier in the county of Limerick. She and her sister were the last representatives

at that place of an extremely good old name in the county. They were both what is termed old maids, and at that time past sixty, but never were old ladies more hospitable, lively, and kind especially to young people. They were both remarkably agreeable and clever. Like all old county ladies of their time, they were great genealogists, and could recount the origin, generations, and intermarriages of every county family of note.

These ladies were visited at their house at Laogier by Mr. Crofton Croker, and are, I think, mentioned by name in the second series of his fairy legends, the series in which, probably communicated by Miss Anne Bailey, he recounts some of the picturesque tradition, of those beautiful lakes.

Lakes, I should no longer say, for the smaller and prettier, has since been drained and gave up from its depths some long-lost and very interesting relics. In their drawing-room stood a curious relic of another sort, old enough too, though belonging to a much more modern period. It was the ancient stirrup cup of the hospitable house of Lao Gear. Crofton Croker has preserved a sketch of this curious glass. I've often had it in my hand. It had a short stem, and the cup part, having the bottom rounded, rose cylindrically in being of a capacity to contain a whole bottle of claret, and almost as narrow as an old-fashioned ale-glass, was tall to a degree that filled me with wonder.

As it obliged the rider to extend his arm as he raised the glass, it must have tried a tipsy man, sitting in the saddle pretty severely. The wonder was that the marvellous tall glass had come down to our times without a crack. There was another glass worthy of a remark in the same drawing-room. It was gigantic and shaped conically, like one of those old-fashioned jelly-glasses which used to be seen upon the shelves of confectioners. It was engraved round the rim with the words, The glorious, pious, and immortal memory,

and on grand occasions was filled to the brim, and after the manner of a loving cup made the circuit of the Whig guests, who owed all to the hero whose memory its legend invoked. It was now but the transparent, parent phantom of those solemn convivialities of a generation who lived, as it were, within hearing of the cannon and shoutings of those stirring times. When I saw it, this glass had long retired from politics and carousals, and stood peacefully

on a little table in the drawing-room, where ladies' hands replenished it, with fair water, and crowned it daily with flowers from the garden. Miss Anne Bailey's conversation ran oftener than her sisters upon the legendary and supernatural. She told her stories with the sympathy, the color, and the mysterious air which contribute so powerfully to effect, and never wearied of answering questions about the old castle, and amusing her young audience with fascinating little glimpses of old adventure and bygone days. My memory retains the picture of my early friend very distinctly. A slim, straight figure, above the middle height,

a general likeness to the full-length portrait of that delightful countess, D'Al Noir, to whom we all owe our earliest and most brilliant glimpses of fairyland, something of her gravely pleasant countenance, plain but refined and ladylike, with that kindly mystery in her sidelong glance and uplifted finger, which indicated the approaching climax of a tale of wonder. Laogier is a kind of center of the operations of the monster fairies. When a child is stolen by the good people, Laogier is conjectured to be the place of its unearthly transmutation

from the human to the fairy state. And beneath its waters lie enchanted, the grand old castle of the Desmond's, the great Earl himself, his beautiful young countess, and all the retinue that surrounded him in the years of his splendor, and at the moment of his catastrophe. Here, too, are historic associations, the huge square that rises at one side of the stable yard close to the old house,

to a height that amazed my young eyes, though robbed of its battlements and one story was a strong, of the last rebellious Earl of Desmond, and is specially mentioned in that delightful old folio, the Hibernia-Pakata, as having, with its Irish garrison on the battlements, defied the army of the Lord Deputy, then marching by upon the summits of the overhanging hills. The house, built under shelter of this stronghold of the once proud and turbulent Desmond's, is old, but snug, with a multitude of small low rooms, such as I've seen in houses of the same age in Shropshire and the neighboring English counties. The hills that overhang the lakes appeared to me

in my young days, and I have not seen them since, to be clothed with a short, shaft verdure, of a hue so dark and vivid as I have never seen before. And one of the lakes is a small island, rocky and wooded, which is believed by the peasantry to represent the top of the highest tower of the castle which sank under a spell to the bottom. In certain states of the atmosphere I have heard of heard educated people say, when in a bow to have reached a certain distance the island appears to rise some feet from the water, its rocks assume the appearance of masonry and the whole circuit presents very much the effect of the battlements of a castle rising above the surface of the lake. This was Miss Anne Bailey's story of the submersion of this lost castle.

The magician Earl. It is well known that the great Earl of Desmond, though history pretends to dispose of him differently, lives to this hour enchanted in his castle, with all his household at the bottom of the lake. There was not in his day, in all the world, so accomplished a magician as he. His fairest castle stood upon an island in the lake, and to this he brought his young and beautiful bride, whom he loved but too well, for she prevailed upon his folly to risk all to gratify her imperious caprice. They had not been long in this beautiful castle when she one day presented herself in the chamber, in which her husband studied his forbidden art,

and there implored him to exhibit before her some of the wonders of his evil science. He resisted long, but her entreaties, tears, and weedlings were at length too much for him, and he consented. But before beginning those astonishing transformations with which he was about to amaze her, he explained to her the awful conditions and dangers of the experiment. Alone in this vast apartment, the walls of which were lapped, far below by the lake whose dark waters lay waiting to swallow them, She must witness a certain series of frightful phenomena, which once commenced, he can neither abridge nor mitigate.

And if throughout their ghastly succession, she spoke one word, or uttered one exclamation, the castle in all that it contained would in one instant subside to the bottom of the lake, there to remain under the servitude of a strong spell for ages. The dauntless curiosity of the lady having prevailed, and the oaken door of the study being locked and barred, the fatal experiments commenced. muttering a spell as he stood before her, feathers sprouted thickly over him. His face became contracted and hooked. A cadaverous smell filled the air, and with heavy, winnowing wings,

a gigantic vulture rose in his stead and swept round and round the room, as if on the point of pouncing upon her. The lady commanded herself through this trial, and instantly another began. The bird alighted near the door, and in less than a minute changed, she saw not how, into a horribly deformed and dwarfish hat, who, with yellow skin hanging about her face and enormous eyes, swung herself on crutches toward the lady, her mouth foaming with fury in her grimaces and contortions, becoming more and more hideous every moment, till she rolled with a yell on the floor in a horrible convulsion at the lady's feet,

and then changed into a huge serpent, with crest erect and quivering tongue. Suddenly as it seemed on the point of darting at her, she saw her husband in its stead, standing pale before her, and, with his finger on his lip, enforcing the continued necessity of silence. He then placed himself at his length on the floor, and began to stretch himself out and out, longer and longer, until his head nearly reached to one end of the vast room and his feet to the other. This horror overcame her. The ill-starred lady uttered a wild scream, whereupon the castle and all that was within it sank in a moment to the bottom of the lake. But once in every seven years, by night, the Earl of Desmond and his retinue emerge

and cross the lake in shadowy cavalcade. His white horse is shod with silver. On that one night the Earl may ride till daybreak, and it behoves him to make good use of his time, for until the silver shoes of his steed be worn through the spell that holds him and his beneath the lake or retain its power. When I, Miss Anne Bailey, was a child, there was still living a man named Teague O'Neill,

who had a strange story to tell. He was a smith, and his forge stood on the brow of the hill, overlooking the lake, on a lonely part of the road to Cahir O'Nlish. One bright moonlight night he was working very late and quite alone. The clink of his hammer, and the wavering glow reflected through the open door on the bushes at the other side of the narrow road, were the only tokens that told of life and vigil for miles around. In one of the pauses of his work, he heard the ring of many hoofs,

ascending the steep road that passed his forage, and standing in his doorway he was just in time to see a gentleman on a white horse, who was dressed in a fashion the like of which the smith had never seen before. This man was accompanied and followed by a mounted retinue as strangely dressed as he. They seemed, by the clang and clatter that announced their approach, to be riding up the hill at a hard, hurry, scurry gallop. But the pace abated as they drew near, and the rider of the white horse who, from his grave and lordly air, assumed to be a man of rank, and accustomed to command, drew bridle and came to a halt before

the Smith's door. He did not speak, and all his train were silent, but he beckoned to the Smith and pointed down to one of his horse's hoofs. Teague stopped and raised it, and held it just long enough to see that it was shod with a silver shoe, which in one place, he said, was worn as thin as a shilling. Instantaneously, his situation was made apparent to him by this sign, and he recoiled with a terrified prayer. The lordly rider, with a look of pain and fury, struck at him suddenly with something that whistled in the air like a whip, and an icy streak seemed to traverse his body,

as if he had been cut through with a leaf of steel. But he was without scathe or scar, as he afterwards found. At the same moment he saw the whole cavalcade break into a gallop and disappear down the hill, with a momentary hurtling in the air like the flight of a volley of cannonshot. Here had been the Earl him to be able to bellow. himself. He had tried one of his accustomed stratagems to lead the Smith to speak to him, for it is well known that, either for the purpose of abridging or of mitigating his period of

enchantment, he seeks to lead people to accost him. But what, in the event of his succeeding, would befall the person whom he had thus ensnared? No one knows. Molly Rial's adventure. When Miss Anne Bailey was a child, Molly Rial was an old woman. She had lived off her days with the Baileys of Laogier, in and about whose house, as was the Irish custom of those days, were a troop of bare-footed country girls, scullery maids, or laundresses, or employed about the poultry-yard or running of errands. Among these was Molly Rial, then a stout, good-humoured lass, with little to think of and nothing to fret about. She was once washing clothes by the process known universally in Munster as beetling. The washer stands up to her ankles and water in which she

has immersed the clothes, which she lays in that state on a great flight. flat stone, and smacks with lusty strokes of an instrument which bears a rude resemblance to a cricket bat, only shorter, broader, and light enough to be wielded freely with one hand. Thus, they smack the dripping clothes, turning them over and over, sousing them in the water, and replacing them on the same stone to undergo a repetition of the process, until they are thoroughly washed. Molly Rial was plying her beetle at the margin of the lake, close under the old house and castle. It was between 8 and 9 o'clock on a fine summer morning. Everything looked bright and beautiful, though quite alone and though she could not see even the windows of the house, hidden from

her view by the irregular ascent and some interposing bushes. Her loneliness was not depressing. Standing up from her work, she saw a gentleman walking slowly down the slope toward her. He was a grand-looking gentleman, arrayed in a flowered silk dressing gown, with a cap of velvet it on his head, and as he stepped toward her in his slippered feet, he showed a very handsome leg. He was smiling graciously as he approached, and drawing a ring from his finger with an air of gracious meaning which seemed to imply that he wished to make her a present. He raised it in his fingers with a pleased look, and placed it on the flat stones beside the clothes she had been beetling so industriously. He drew back a little, and continued to look at her with an encouraging

smile which seemed to say, you have earned your reward. You must not be afraid to take it. The girl fancied that this was some gentleman who had arrived, as often happened in those hospitable and haphazard times, late and unexpectedly the night before, and who was now taking a little indolent ramble before breakfast. Molly Rial was a little shy, and more so at having been discovered by so grand a gentleman with her petticoats gathered a little high about her bare shins.

She looked down, therefore, upon the water at her feet, and then she saw a ripple of blood, and then another ring after her. ring, coming and going to and from her feet. She cried out the sacred name in horror, and lifting her eyes, the courtly gentleman was gone, but the blood rings about her feet spread with the speed of light over the surface of the lake, which for a moment glowed like one vast estuary of blood. Here was the earl once again, and Molly Rial declared that if it had not been for that frightful transformation of the water, she would have spoken to him next minute and would

thus have passed under a spell, perhaps as direful as his own. The Banshee. So old a Munster family as the Bailies of Laugier could not fail to have their attendant Banshee. Everyone attached to the family knew this well, and could cite evidences of that unearthly distinction. I heard Miss Bailey relate the only experience she had personally had of that wild spiritual sympathy. She said that, being then young, she and Miss Susan undertook a long attendance upon the

sickbed of their sister, Miss Kitty, whom I have heard remembered among her contemporaries, as the merriest and most entertaining of human beings. This light-hearted young lady was dying of consumption, the sad duties of such attendance being divided among many sisters. As there then were, the night-watches devolved upon the two ladies I have named, I think, as being the eldest. It is not improbable that these long and melancholy vigils, lowering the spirits and exciting the nervous system, prepared them for illusions. At all events, one night at dead of night,

Miss Bailey and her sister, sitting in the dying lady's room, heard such sweet and melancholy music as they had never heard before. It seemed to them like distant cathedral music. The room of the dying girl had its windows toward the yard, and the old castle stood near and full in sight. The music was not in the house, but seemed to come from the yard or beyond it. Miss Anne Bailey took a candle and went down the back stairs. She opened the back door, and standing there, heard the same faint but solemn harmony, and could not tell whether it most resembled the distant music of instruments or a choir of voices. It seemed to come through the windows of the old castle high in the air, but when she approached the tower, the music, she thought, came from

above the house, at the other side of the yard, and thus perplexed and at last frightened, she returned. This aerial music, both she and her sister, Miss Suve, Susan Bailey, a vow that they distinctly heard, and for a long time. Of the fact she was clear, and she spoke of it with great awe. The governess's dream. This lady, one morning, with a grave countenance that indicated something weighty upon her mind, told her pupils that she had on the night before, had a very remarkable dream. The first room you enter in the old castle, having reached the foot of the spiral stone stair,

is a large hall, dim and lofty, having only a small wall. window or two, set high and deep recesses in the wall. When I saw the castle many years ago, a portion of this capacious chamber was used as a store for the turf laid into the last year. Her dream placed her alone in this room and there entered a grave-looking man, having something very remarkable in his countenance, which impressed her, as a fine portrait sometimes will, with a haunting sense of character and individuality. In his hand, this man carried a wand about the length of an ordinary walking.

He told her to observe and remember its length, and to mark well the measurements he was about to make, the result of which she was to communicate to Mr. Bailey of Lao Gear. From a certain point in the wall, with this wand, he measured along the floor, at right angles with the wall, a certain number of its lengths, which he counted aloud, and then in the same way from the adjoining wall he measured a certain number of its lengths, which he also counted distinctly. He then told her that, at the point where these two lines met, at a depth of a certain number of feet which he also told her, treasure lay buried. And so the dream broke up, and her remarkable visitant vanished. She took the girls with her to the old castle where, having cut a switch to the

length represented to her in her dream, she measured the distances and ascertained, as she supposed, the point on the floor beneath which the treasure lay. The same day, she related her dream to Mr. Bailey, but he treated it laughingly and took no step in consequence. Some time after this, she again saw in a dream, the same remarkable-looking man, who repeated his message, and appeared displeased, but the dream was treated by Mr. Bailey as before. The same dream occurred again, and the children became so clamorous to have the castle floor explored with pick and shovel at the point indicated by the thrice-seen messenger that at length Mr. Bailey consented, and the floor was opened and a trench was sunk at the spot,

which the governess had pointed out. Miss Anne Bailey, and nearly all the members of the family, her father included, were present at this operation. As the workmen approached the depth described in the vision, the interest in suspense of all increased, and when the iron implements met the solid resistance of a broad flagstone, which returned a cavernous sound to the stroke, the excitement of all present rose to its acme. With some difficulty the flag was raised, and a chamber of stonework, large enough to receive a moderately sized crock or pit, was disclosed. Alas, it was empty. But in the earth at the bottom of it, Miss Bailey said,

She herself saw, as every other bystander plainly did, the circular impression of a vessel, which had stood there, as the mark seemed to indicate, for a very long time. Both the Miss Bayleys were strong in their belief here afterwards, that the treasure which they were convinced had actually been deposited there, had been removed by some more trusting and active listener than their father had proved. The same governess remained with them to the time of her death, which occurred some years later, under the following circumstances, as extraordinary, as her dream.

The Earl's Hall The good governess had a particular liking for the old castle, and when lessons were over, would take her book or her work, into a large room in the ancient building called the Earl's Hall. Here she caused a table and chair to be placed for her use, and then the Kyaraskiro would sit so at her favorite occupations with just a little ray of subdued light admitted through one of the glassless windows above her,

and falling upon her table. The Earl's Hall is entered by a narrow arched door, opening close to the winding stair. It is a very large and gloomy room, pretty nearly square with a lofty vaulted ceiling and a stone floor. Being situated high in the castle, the walls of which are immensely thick, and the windows, very small and few, the silence that rains here is like that of a subterranean cavern. You hear nothing in this solitude except perhaps twice in a day, the twitter of a swallow in one of the small windows, high in the wall. This good lady, having one day retired to her accustomed solitude, was missed from the house at her wanted hour of return. This, in a country house, such as Irish

houses were in those days, excited little surprise and no harm. But when the dinner hour came, which was then in country houses five o'clock, and the governess had not appeared, some of her young friends, it being not yet winter, and sufficient light remaining to guide them through the gloom of the dim ascent and passages, mounted the old stone stair to the level of the Earl's Hall, gaily calling to her as they approached. There was no answer.

On the stone floor, outside the door of the Earl's Hall, to their horror, they found her lying insensible. By the usual means she was restored to consciousness, but she continued very ill, and was conveyed to the house where she took her bed. It was there and then that she related what had occurred to her. She had placed herself as usual at her little work-tenth, and had been either working or reading, I forget which, for some time and felt in her usual

health and serene spirits. Raising her eyes and looking towards the door, she saw a horrible-looking little man enter. He was dressed in red, was very short, at a singularly dark face, and a most atrocious countenance. Having walked some steps into the room with his eyes fixed on her, he stopped, and beckoning to her to follow, moved back toward the door. About halfway, again he stopped once more and turned. She was so terrified that she sat staring at the apparition without moving or speaking. Seeing that she had not obeyed him, his face became more frightful and menacing, and as it underwent this change, he raised his hand and stamped on the floor.

Gesture, look, and all expressed diabolical fury. Through sheer extremity of terror she did rise, and as he turned again followed him a step or two in the direction. of the door. He again stopped, and with the same mute menace compelled her again to follow him. She reached the same narrow stone doorway of the Earl's Hall, through which she had passed. From the threshold she saw him standing a little way off, with his eyes still fixed on her. Again he signed to her and began to move along the short passage that leads to the winding stair. But instead of following him further, she fell on the floor in a fit.

The poor lady was thoroughly persuaded that she was not. long to survive this vision, and her foreboding proved true. From her bed she never rose. Fever and delirium supervened in a few days, and she died. Of course it is possible that fever, already approaching, had touched her brain when she was visited by the phantom, and that it had no external existence. End of Section 12. Stories of Lao Gear Section 13 of Madame Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheridan LaFanue This Libravox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.

Epilogue by M.R. James I have no materials for compiling a fresh memoir of Joseph Sheridan Lefoneu. The thing has been done in the dictionary of national biography in his brother William's amusing book, 70 years of Irish life, and in the introduction to the Purcell papers and to his collected poems. My concern is with his novels and stories, and for the understanding of what has to be told it is not necessary. to know more at the outset than this,

that La Funu, an Irishman of Huguenot descent, lived his life in Ireland and for the most part, in and near Dublin from 1815 to 1873. His literary career began about 1838. He was a scholar and a gentleman, and by all accounts a most attractive personality. But after the death of his wife in 1858, he became a good deal of a recluse,

and devoted himself almost entirely to writing. From 1861 to 69, he owned and edited the Dublin University magazine. To this periodical, he was a not-infrequent contributor, anonymously for the most part, as the body of this work is shown. But in and after 1861,

he began issuing in it serial stories under his own name, and after he had retired from the editorship, he continued to write in other magazines. He died on February 7, 1873. His published work consists of novels, stories, poems, and a pamphlet or two. No doubt there were also rebrands. by his pen. But of his poems, which are accessible in a collected form, his pamphlets, and reviews,

I have nothing to say. Only his novels and stories come under consideration here. The novels first. There are 14 of these, two early, 12 later. The Coch and Anchor, a tale of Old Dublin published in 1845 anonymously at Dublin in three volumes, reissued in 1873 under the title of Morley Court. Again, as the Cochon Anchor in 1895, one volume illustrated Torlau O'Brien, Dublin, 1847, illustrated with 22 plates by Fizz, reissued with the original plates by Rootledge,

and in 1896 by Downey, there was also a cheap issue without pictures. For 14 or 15 years, he wrote no more novels. Then, in 1861, a steady flow begins in the Dublin University magazine. I have derived help in this part of my research from a bibliography of Lofanou, contributed by Mr. S. M. Ellis to the Irish book lover in 19161.62, the House by the Churchyard, three volumes, Tensley, 1863, later in one volume.

1863, Wilder's Hand, three volumes, Bentley, 1864. Then, in one volume, an illustrated edition in 1903. 1864, Uncle Silas and Maude Rutten, three volumes, as Uncle Silas. Bentley, 1864 and 1865, also in one volume. 1865, Guy Deverell, three volumes, Bentley, 1865, also in one volume. 1866, all in the dark, two volumes, Bentley, 1866, and 1869, also in one volume. 1867, Tenants of Mallory, three volumes, Tinsley, also in one volume. 1868, Haunted Lives, three volumes, Tensley, 1868, not reissued in one volume. 1868, a lost name, first appeared in Temple Bar, three volumes, Benton. 1868, not reissued in one volume.

1869, the Wyvern Mystery. Three volumes, Tinsley, 1869. Also in one volume, 1889. 1870, Checkmate, first appeared in Cassell's magazine. Three volumes, Hearst and Blackett, 1871, also in one volume. 1871, the Rose and the Key, first appeared in all the year round. Three volumes. Chapman and Hall, 1871, also in one volume.

1872 and three. Willing to die. First appeared in all the year-round. Three volumes, Hurst and Blackett. 1873, also in one volume. Next, collections of stories. 1851. Ghost stories and tales of mystery, anonymous, Dublin, with plates by Fizz.

A very rare book. It had a device on the cover of a cat and a tombstone, etc. My copy is not in the original binding and lacks one plate. The British Museum had not a copy in 1916. It contains the watcher, shalk and the painter, the murdered cousin, the evil guest. All these had appeared before as we shall see. 1871, Chronicles of Golden Friars, three volumes Bentley not reprinted.

This consists of three long stories. Laura Mildmay, which I have not found in print earlier, The Haunted Baronet contributed to Belgravia, volume 13, in 1870. A bird of passage contributed to Temple Bar in 1870, reissued in 1896 as a chronicle of Golden Friars with some other stories. 1872, in a glass darkly, three volumes, Bentley, also in one volume, a modern reissue in two parts by Nunes. This contains green tea,

first printed in all-year-round October 1869, the familiar, identical with the watcher of 1851, Mr. Justice Harbottle, which appeared in some London magazine which I cannot at present rediscover, the Room in the Dragon Volant contributed to London Society, Volume 16 and 1872, and Carmilla, which I have not traced further back. 1880, the Purcell Papers. three volumes, Bentley, with Preparatory Memoir by AP Graves. This contains 13 stories, Leofanue's earliest work, which appeared in Dublin University Magazine, volumes 11 through 16. Between 1838 and 1840, they are, the ghost and the

bone setter, the fortunes of Sir Robert Ardo, used again in the haunted baronet and Sir Dominic's bargain in the present volume. The last heir of Castle Connor, the drunkard's dream, compared with the vision of Tom Chuff in this volume. episode in the history of an Irish Countess, a first sketch of Uncle Silas identical with the murdered cousin of 1851, the bridal of Karigvara, shalkin the painter, used again in 1851, scraps of Hibernian ballads Jim Sullivan's adventure, an episode in the history of a Tyrone family, used again in the Wivered Mystery, an adventure of Captain Hardress Fitzgerald, used again in Torlo O'Brien, the choir Gunder, Billy Maloney's Taste of Love and Glory.

1894, a volume containing The Watcher and other stories was issued with illustrations by Brinsley-Lafinue. 1895, a similar volume entitled The Evil Guest. 1896, a third, a Chronicle of Golden Friars, the contents of all three are selections from the 1851 volume, the Purcell Papers, and the Chronicles of Golden Friars. We now come to the single stories which have not been reprinted or collected up to the present time. They are only discoverable by research, and research of this particular kind into the fields of more or less forgotten periodicals of the 60s and early 70s

is not very easily carried out. I am convinced that I have missed some stories, yet I have done a good deal of ransacking as occasion offered. Someone will, I hope, supplement my list. It is offered here with all faults. I take first the Dublin University magazine, and omitting notice of items that have been already mentioned, I find the following stories which are undoubtedly by LaFanue, though they do not bear his name. 1848, some account of the latter days of the Honorable Richard Marston of Dunerun. This is the first form of the evil guest. 1850, the mysterious lodger. 1851, ghost stories of Chappellazade.

1853, some strange disturbances in an old house in Anger Street, Dublin. 1861, Altor de Lacey. 1864, My Aunt Margaret's Adventure. Wicked Captain Walshaw, Walling. In Temple Bar, 1868, Squire Toby's Will, a ghost story, anonymous. 1884, Hyacinth O'Toole. This is a fragment of a burlesque rollicking tale of a tallow chantler in Dublin society. Probably it is early work.

In all year round, 186970, the child that went with the fairies, the white cat of Drumgunniel, and stories of Lao Gear. 1870, the vision of Tom Chuff. 181771, Madam Crowell's ghost, embodied verbatim, in Laura Mildmay in chronicles of Golden Friars. 1872, Sir Dominic's Bargand, Legend of Dunerun. In London Society, 1872, Christmas number, Dickin the Devil. This last is the only one that is not anonymous.

This is then, as complete a list of the novels and stories as I can produce. Some remarks upon them are inevitable. Anyone who reads through the whole range of volumes that I have enumerated will be struck by certain habits of the writer, quite apart from any question of style or quality. I shall enlarge upon two of these. One very marked one is his penchant for rewriting a story in a different setting and for developing a long story out of a short one. Take examples of this, the cock and anchor.

His first novel was, as I have said, reissued with some changes as Morley Court. But there, it is a story of the 18th century. In 1870, the plot and many of the incidents reappear in Checkmate in a 19th century setting. True, another, and a very striking thread is now interwoven with them. The coarse villain of the cock and anchor is replaced by the refined but far more formidable figure of Walter Longclus, and the atmospheres of Lefanoe's most impressive. But the earlier story has been incorporated into the later. In Torlo O'Brien, 1847, a story of 1840, Hardress Fitzgerald, is used. It will be found in the Purcell papers.

Again, the main incidents of the story of Uncle Silas appear first in the Dublin University magazine in 1839, as a past in the secret history of an Irish countess, one of the Purcell papers, and again in 1851, in the anonymous book under the title of The Murdered Cousin. In this case, too, the setting was shifted in the novel from 18th to the 19th century. A lost name is a three-volume novel developed out of a longish story called The Evil Guest, one of the 1851 collection. The Evil Guest is practically identical with Richard Marston of Dunerun, 1848. for the third time the 19th century replaces the 18th,

but if I am not mistaken, the central incident in the three stories, the murder is derived from a tale once widely current. Dickens and the Hollow Tree Inn tells of a chapbook he used to read of Jonathan Bradford, and says he, Then I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveler's bedside with his own knife at his feet and blood upon his hand, how he was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestations that he had indeed gone there to kill the traveler for his saddlebags,

but had been stricken motionless on finding him already slain, and how the Osler, years afterwards, owned the deed. Now the plight of the landlord is exactly that of Carmel Sherlock in the lost name who goes to kill Sir Roke Wichorley, and finds his throat already cut. The master of the house is the real culprit. I have not been able to search out the story of Jonathan Bradford, but I think my identification of it with Lufanu's source must stand.

The fourth example of this odd habit is in the Wivered Mystery, The episode which describes the blind cast-off mistress of the hero making her way into the bedroom of his young wife and trying to cut her throat was first embodied in a short story, episode in the history of a Tyrone family, which will be found in the Purcell papers. Lastly, in the Chronicles of Golden Friars, two stories out of the three of which the book consists show the same or a like trait. And Laura Mildmay is the fine ghost story of Dame Crowell of Applewale, which will be found anonymous in all the year round. and in the haunted baronet, another older story, the fortunes of Sir Robert Ardaw, is worked up and expanded.

I do not know whether many parallels to this procedure can be cited. I do not defend or repudiate it. I merely record it as a marked feature in Lefineau's work and pass on to call attention to another equally curious. That is, my author's fondness for repeating a certain motif, again in varied contexts, so varied that I think the reader need not resent it. The theme is this,

The villain of the peace returns after the lapse of many years to surroundings where someone who knew him of old still live and until the catastrophe passes unrecognized. In most cases, his old crime has been committed before the book begins. We are only told of it as a past event, and we only see the criminal in his new avatar.

The examples of this are first in the house of the churchyard, Dangerfield, whom Lofenou, with odd carelessness, calls sometimes Giles and sometimes Paul, is really the murderer in constant, villain Charles Archer. He comes as an elderly man to a place where there are but two people living who might know him. One does know him at once and keeps silence. The other is long puzzled and suddenly enlightened and does not keep silence and suffers for it. And Checkmate,

the murderer, Yelland Mace, reappears as the elegant but mysterious Walter Longclus. But this time he has had his face entirely changed by an elaborate operation. In tenets of Mallory, the outlawed Arthur Verney of Wright Viscount Verney for years an outcast in Constantinople returns to England at the peril of his life as Mr. Dingwell the great Greek merchant. In all these cases, the suspicion and the steps that lead to ultimate detection

are a great element of interest in the story. But these are not all the examples. In Laura Mildmay, the Chronicles of Golden Friars, the wicked Captain Torkel figures at the beginning of the story is trying to kill kidnapped the baby heroin, and then after years have passed, and he has long been reputed dead, turns up again as the excellent and pious Mr. Burton, and is only prevented at the last moment from making the said heroin fall over a precipice. In Guy Deverell, Herbert Strangeways, injured long

years before by Sir Jekyll Marlowe, takes up his abode as a visitor, supposed to be a Frenchman at Marlowe Hall, and by his machinations, Sir Jekyll's thread is cut short. And the strange book Haunted Lives has a very similar strain of an unsuspected idea. identity of the villain, so to call him, and the hero running through it. Lufanu himself, who lets a year or two lapse after using this favorite theme before he touches it again, may well have applauded himself for his moderation. To the critic who reads the whole series of his works from start to finish, he may well seem to have indulged his predilection for it.

Pre-election, I am sure it is, and not poverty of invention. Too much. Personally, I find the settings of the theme so satisfactorily varied that I do not resent its reoccurrence. But if anyone is inclined to Cavill, I cannot put up a very strong defense. Only I would represent that Lefanoo is pretty obviously one who writes stories for his own and his reader's pleasure. He has no axe to grind, no cause to champion, no crusade to preach. In none of his books do I find any tendency, unless it be the one in which he makes fun of spiritualism. His object is to tell a story, usually one that will mystify and alarm his reader,

and in his favorite theme he sees the possibility of many effective. variations. I do not blame him for making trial of them. There are, to be sure, really weak places in his armor. For one thing, he is certainly a hasty and rather careless writer. His text admits of many small amendations which shows him to have been a bad proofreader. There are a certain number of definite mistakes and inconsistencies in the stories, and you may often find sentences which are not only too long, but do not construe. That is one blemish, do I cannot doubt, in part to the conditions under which he wrote. I mean the serious. serial form which he employed for 12 out of his 14 novels.

A more serious fault affects the texture of the work. It is what I will call his mockishness. He can write of sad things with true and moving pathos. He can write love scenes that appeal is genuine. But he does now and again also indulge in a sentimentality which calls the blush to the cheek. It is at the worst, perhaps, in a lost name. Perhaps by way of conclusion I may be allowed to offer

a brief characterization of the novels. Of the two early ones, the cock and anchor and Torlo O'Brien, the former has been sufficiently described. The other is not very readable now, but in one or two places the author has been quite relentless in his description of horrors, and is ably backed up by the terrible illustrations of Fizz. Of the later and larger group,

six are markedly superior to the rest. These are, the house by the churchyard, Wilder's hand, Uncle Silas, Guy Deverell, tenants of Mallory, and checkmate. Uncle Silas in the house by the churchyard, divide the honors of the first place. Probably the first named is too well known to require description, but the second, I think, is not,

and it is a book which seems to me to bring together in a concentrated form all Lefano's best qualities as a storyteller. It is a costume novel, the scene is Chappellazade, near Dublin, and the date, the year 1767. From the prologue in which the scene is set, and the tale started by the digging up of a strangely battered skull in the churchyard, You pass to an amazingly fine description of a dark night of storm and a funeral, and these strike the note of ominous mystery which runs through all the book. Note that the book is a gloomy one. It is full of live gay people, and there is rollicking farce of excellent quality, side by side with ghosts and murders and a somber ballad unsurpassed in its way, which has a decisive bearing on the catastrophe. In short, this is a book to which I find myself returning over and over again, with no sense of dissonance of dissonance. appointment. The other four novels all have strong points. The intrigue in Wilder's hand defies detection. Guy Deverell is full of good small character sketches. Checkmate has moments of

breathless interest. Tendence of Mallory is marked out by the glorious talk of Mr. Dingwell. Frequenters of Beaumarise, by the way, will soon recognize that there, and at Pimmon Priory, the scene of the story is laid. Personally, I find the remaining six worth reading, but I do not wish persons unacquainted with Lefanoe to approach him by way of a lost name or all in the dark. Let them begin with in a glass darkly, where they will find the very best of his shorter stories, and go on to Uncle Silas in the house by the churchyard. It is on these three volumes that I principally base the claim I make for Lefanoe that he is one of the best storytellers of the last age.

End of Section 13. Epilogue by M.R. James. End of Madam Crowell's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery by J. Sheridan LaFanue