to him from this gentle imposition of hands, a sense of peace to envelop him; and long, rejoicing under the delicious consciousness of reviving strength and vigor, he would have sat, had the touch long continued. But as if aware of his desire, she perversely flitted away, and opening the door into the lighted hall, suffered its gleam to irradiate the gloom.

"You are too sudden in your movements, child," said St. Denys, as she swept over a clattering chair in her way.

"And I was growing dainty as a lady with my fingers," she rejoined. "It's not my fault; but something about the house, some sprite twitches them."

"Do you think the miraculous would stoop into Sir Rohan's dining-room?”

66

"I don't care, papa.

I want to hear that

ghost-story. I came for that. It's just the house to be haunted, unless the fragrance of paints and oils does not agree with their honors, —and just the hour. We have a ghost at the Castle, but he has been quiet so long as to afford no amusement. We were brought here, too, in a miraculous manner."

"You are absurd, Miriam," said St. Denys, with a smile. "Be quiet."

"Don't you know, Sir Rohan," she continued disregardfully, "that animals-brutes, of course -are said to perceive apparitions more quickly than men? Last night we were on the road very late, and going smoothly, when suddenly the horses began to caper from side to side, dashed into a lane, and then through a broken hedge, racing over the moor like hounds till they pulled up near another highway, and today that road took us to the village below here, where we had not intended to stop, and which was, you know, quite out of our way. It's a wonder our necks were n't broken. The coachman told me that he knew the creatures met the Swairth, that he himself saw something swinging, white and shining, before them, and nothing could have tempted him to proceed. He told of it at the inn, and they said very likely it belonged up here; that it was the wraith of some forlorn woman of your house, and that, if papa had a tourist's curiosity, we should find some pictures here, and might see the wraith for ourselves. So you perceive the

Thing brought us here, and I wait for the story. Haven't you a ghost, Sir Rohan ?

A class of words which Sir Rohan had grown to avoid even in his thought, was now perpetually dropping from the lips of his guests, and he expended his energy nerving himself against the abrupt attacks.

"No ghost?" persisted Miriam.

"My ancestors never had one," he replied, in a low, distinct tone, the volume of his voice compressed from trembling.

"But you! have you no phantom, no spectre?" "Pardon me if I say that you confound the terms."

"Have you, then, found any difference between ghosts and spectres?" questioned St. Denys, gayly.

"There should be a distinction. A spectre seems rather to have risen from the grave, to own a glimmering shroud, to carry with it the smell of the dead and the air of vaults and coffins. But a ghost!—A ghost," said Sir Rohan, "is a very different thing."

"Then you have nothing to tell us?" "Nothing."

"You must forgive the rural superstition." "Well. If one opening fails, I can try another. I am a meteoromant, you know, an inheritance of certain people. I know a charm to ward off the Evil Eye."

"And that surprises no one, Miss Miriam." "Nonsense! I tell papa's fortune often enough, and it comes true often enough."

"And what is St. Denys's fortune?"

"He was born to trouble and much peace. Begin as I will, these words always come and I must say them,— trouble, yet much peace."

"You divine by thunder and lightning, and, having called your imps around you, would now tell me my fate, is it so?" and he extended his hand.

"Yes," poring over the hand gingerly, without taking it. "But there's no fortune for you, good or bad. I should think your life had been wiped out; there's not a line on the palm. Alackaday, kind gentleman," said she, assuming the sing-song gypsy tone, "great evil have you waded through, and greater is to come. Small pleasure will you know in life, and in sorrow will you die."

"A fortune not at all new," said Sir Rohan,

dismally.

"Was it true?" she asked.

"You should know best."

the

"Papa says I don't know at all. But the fact is, that once when I was a child I fell in with some gypsies wandering through Kent, who fancied me strangely like themselves, taught me half their singular words and Ways, and never come by the Castle now but they leave me a cake of rich and costly condiments;-so housekeeper wrote. An odd life, that of the woods, with a relish that no other life possesses. One would feel, I should think, living an outlaw in those deep recesses, like all the rest of the wild growth there, the lichen on the trees, the little wood-pigeons, the sixstriped snakes that shoot from under one brown leaf to another like darts of poison, feel as if life ceased with death, if indeed death ever came there. I wonder why you never followed it, Sir Rohan, among your other adventures."

Sir Rohan did not think it necessary to tell her of the solitary days and nights he had spent housed with the cold-crowned snake,' and meet

6