No: I have met plenty of ghostseers, and have heard them tell their stories with a sincerity of awe and a shuddering recollection of the terror past that left no sort of doubt as to their belief. And history assures me that, ever since the days of Homer, and perhaps before then, ghosts have from time to time been seen of men, and have made the hair of the seers stand on end, and their blood curdle with fear. But I never saw a ghost myself, except once. And then? Yes; then I must do the ghost the justice to say that I was horribly frightened.

I

I was very glad to accept Charlie Neville's invitation to pass a few days with him in the cottage which he inhabits in one of the pleasantest valleys in Westmoreland - right through which valley runs the road from Lancashire to Scotland. was very tired of being chained to my desk in one of the dirtiest, gloomiest, dampest towns in England—a town that for six months in the year alternates between fog and sleet, and for the rest between fog and rain-a town where nobody lives except to make a fortune, where nobody does anything or thinks of anything but his fortune till he has made it, and whence, the fortune made, every one goes as far away as possible to spend it. I had been a prisoner, or a slave, all summer, and it was now September. All the more did I delight in my journey, knowing that September is the pleasantest of months in Westmoreland, where May is cold, the summer mostly wet, and August dense and oppressive. Charlie was a pleasant member of a pleasant family, and the idea of once more enjoying the society of young ladies -a species unknown in the neighbourhood of my prison-house-was enough to excite my spirits to the uttermost. Even a long railway

journey, in a carriage from which the presence of an asthmatic director-looking old gentleman banished alike the breath of fresh air and the hope of tobacco, failed to subdue them. It was in a joyous mood that I sprang upon the platform at Windermere, valise in hand, and looked out for Charlie.

A big dog made his appearance first, who, after suspiciously glancing and snuffing at a travelling suit which retained an atmosphere of the printing-office about it, rubbed his nose against the hand that held my valise just as my friend came up and shook me heartily by the other.

"Is that monster yours?" I said, as we walked to the phaeton. "He was more friendly than I expected, and more formidable than I liked."

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"Ah," said his master, Cæsar was puzzled by the smell of factorysmoke and cotton-fluff about you. If it had been tobacco-smoke and cigar-ashes he would have recognised it. But Cæsar always finds out a gentleman. There is a baronet of my acquaintance who goes about in such rags that the servants offer him a penny when he calls for the first time on a friend; but Cæsar recognised his title at first sight, and made him the humblest obeisance. And the best dressed of burnt-out tailors or shipwrecked sailors, in whom I might expect a visitor, cannot take in Cæsar. He never lets them open the gate. Dogs are the most aristocratic of living creatures."

And this commenced a discussion, in which Charlie, who quartered the Kingmaker's Bear and Ragged Staff, and could recite his whole pedigree since the battle of Barnet, bore his part with great spirit and vivacity. This occupied our tongues while the pony traversed many miles of the loveliest scenery in England. This, and the

which it was possible to trace the ruins of a larger house than the present cottage which had renewed the name of Neville Grange.

My toilet made, I left my room, without bestowing much attention on the details of its appearance. I was joined by Charles; and when we reached the drawing-room he introduced me to his mother, a lady still beautiful and elegant, in middle age and widow's weeds, and to her elder daughters, girls between sixteen and twenty. Annie, the younger, resembled her mother. Her beauty was of the best Saxon type; that which, in spite of fair hair, blue eyes, and clear, soft complexion, is redeemed by something of refined elegance about the features, and of intellectual expression in eye and brow, from the painfully close resemblance to a wax doll, which is so generally characteristic of Teutonic loveliness. Flora was thoroughly Normansuch as might have been the heiress of Warwick ere her marriage with the last hereditary chief of the house of Neville-with slender form, a hand which every sculptor must have admired in perfect despair of imitation; a head small, gracefully set on, and of exquisite shape, with ringlets of raven blackness and the only instance I ever saw of true black hair that was not coarse-as soft and fine as her sister's. Her eyes were dark; of their exact colour I never could satisfy myself, but of their brilliancy there could be no doubt or forgetfulness, nor yet of that exquisite softness which belongs only to dark eyes when earnest emotion finds unconscious expression in their upturned gaze. Why I did not fall in love with Flora is not now to the purpose. But so penetrated was I with interest in her and admiration for her beauty, that during the evening I could not help observing her with a close attention which made me aware-certain beyond the possibility of doubt that some painful anxiety was preying upon

her mind. A jest from her brother, a sudden appeal to her notice from the children, would bring colour to her cheek in warm, fast-fading flushes; when unnoticed she seemed absorbed, not so much in reverie as in calculation. I am not a close observer of countenances, but I can tell the difference between the face of a dreamer and a thinker-can even discriminate between meditative thought and that kind of consideration which is preparing for the future, planning the achievement of a plot or the avoidance of a misfortune. The closer my observation, the clearer became my comprehension of the nature of the thoughts which disturbed that transparent countenance. Always, as she seemed to despair for a moment, and intermit her calculation, a shadow that spoke of fear, and of something that seemed like shame, passed over her face. If it had been possible to associate with that face and form, so evidently belonging to the highest "aristocracy of nature," so lofty and so pure, any thought of dishonour or untruth, or if Flora had been young enough for the innocent scrapes of childhood, I should have said that she anticipated some fatal discovery -was scheming to avoid being "found out." Most men, perhaps most women, are subject to such alarms from time to time; but men do not like to believe that there can be anything to be "found out" in the mind of a young and beautiful girl.

We talked pleasantly and frankly, all of us. Flora spoke unfrequently; but when she did speak, the clear tones of a voice that "like a silver clarion rang," though only like the clarion's notes subdued by distance, and something noble as well as novel in what she said, gave our conversation its chief zest and charm. I had fallen into the bachelor habit of smoking a cigar immediately after the evening meal, and that digestive had become to me as necessary as the meal itself;

and Charlie was fully of my mind. But after tea that evening-for the Nevilles dined early, and Charles was too true a gentleman not to know that nothing so annoys a guest as household changes made for him-I was pleased that there was no excuse for the accustomed departure of the ladies, and deaf to his hints, that pointed towards sunset clouds and meant tobacco-smoke. And when bedtime came-their hours were early-my regrets were more sincere than Annie believed them.

"You will get your cigar with Charlie, and thank us much for going.' I know he has been watching for ten o'clock a full hour and a half."

"I plead guilty to the cigar, Miss Neville; but I, who have that every night of my life, and enjoy ladies' society only by such rare chances as this, would readily go to bed cigarless if you would postpone your retirement but half an hour."

"Take care lest they take you at your word," said Charlie, in horror; and his sister, smiling, followed Mrs Neville and Flora from the room. Charlie and I turned out. The wind blew hard; it generally blows in Westmoreland throughout the autumn, and to smoke, save under shelter, had been impossible. We wrapped railway rugs round us, and sought shelter in an angle of the ruins. A wall, some eight feet high, joined that of the cottage just beneath the second window in my room. Cæsar's kennel, where he lay unchained, stood at a little distance by what had once been the opposite wall of a small room or closet, apparently enclosed in the centre of the old house. Here it was possible to light a match; here we found seats upon the fallen fragments of the wall, and smoked in peace.

or

"This place," said Charlie, " rather some ten feet above our heads, was the scene of the family tragedy from which our house

dates its decay, and the doom-if your modern principles will let me call it so that hangs over us."

"And what is that doom?" I inquired, in perhaps a sceptical tone.

"Do you not know," my friend asked, "that in no generation does more than one male of the house live to reach the full maturity of manhood, and that he never dies in his bed? Ah, you may smile. But so truly have we believed in the doom, that every chief of my line has married before he reached my age, lest his race should end with him; and yet never since Sir Guy's time have two brothers of our blood been men together. And never has any head of the family died save by a violent or a sudden death. My great-grandfather fell at Yorktown; his father had been drowned while bathing in Grasmere; my grandfather was killed at Badajos—’

I knew why he paused. I remembered the riot unquelled; the blame of civilian imbecility laid on the soldier; the forbearance slandered as cowardice, the sentence of the court-martial avoided by suicide, four months before Charlie's youngest sister was born. I remembered for what cause his mother wore the widow's weeds she had never abandoned. The superstition of my friend began to touch me. I could not turn to indifferent matters, as I might have done had any other man spoken to me of his family misfortunes; for Charlie was my intimate friend. So I asked him,

“And what is the story of the crime by which this doom has been entailed on all Sir Guy's posterity?"

"What, have you never heard the legend of our house? Well, it is not so strange, for it is not one of which we care to talk to strangers; and even to you, I should hardly have cared to speak of it anywhere but here. Elsewhere you might have doubted it or