that his suspicions were misplaced; that I had no ambition to supplant him in his place; that I was a person in his master's rank in life, and had a servant of my own, in London, where I lived when I was at home. That I was at this time on a visit at Mr. Fenwick's of Bleaklawns, in whose gig I had come, and whose servant was at that moment sitting in the said gig, with a basket for me, and would put up for the night at the Greenborn Arms, and come to fetch me in the morning. "He shall give you a set down,” said I, "if you like: you can go in the gig anywhere you fix on, to spend the night. That will convince you. Look, there is the gig in the street: I am sure you must perceive, now, that I am a respectable person."

By degrees, conviction appeared to dawn on his mind, and when I added the clinching argument of a guinea, that he might drink my health at the Greenborn Arms, the last shadow of a doubt fled I had paid my footing, and was free of the haunted house. Well, I ran down to the gig, and received the basket from the servant's hand. It occurred to me that the young man might like to share my adventure, and I made him the offer, which was "declined with thanks." I now entered the house, and found its internal aspect not such as to belie the external. A wide hall, wainscoted, and looking vaster than it was by the light of a single candle; a broad staircase, of a most forlorn aspect, with a massive wooden balustrade, that spoke of times when the old mansion was merrier; a long passage, along which the echoes of our own footsteps pursued us, and shot the thought into my brain, "What sort of footsteps shall I, perhaps, hear along this passage, when this man has left me alone in the house" then another staircase. a back staircase, narrow, of stone, winding down into regions I could only guess at, and up to the second floor, to which we ascended by it: finally, a back-room on the second floor, into which my guide conducted me, and in which a fire was burning. This was the room, he said, he generally kept in, and he thought I should be more comfortable there than anywhere else. there was his bedroom adjoining, in case I should feel inclined to take a stretch in the course of the night.

After making some arrangements for my accommodation, the man was going to take leave, when I thought I should like first to have a few words of conversation with him about the ghost. I therefore asked him, as he was about to quit the room, whether he ever saw the-the lady, in short, with the clubfeet?

"Did he ever see her?" repeated the man, in surprise: to be sure he saw her, every night of his life. "Every night?" said I. "Then she doesn't appear in the day-time?" "Not often," was his reply.

"And, do you think it likely, may I ask, that I shall see her to-night ?" inquired I, somewhat taken aback by finding the man give such an unequivocal testimony to the reality of the apparition.

"Will you see her to-night? To be sure you will," answered he, with a look of surprise. "What would hin

der you?"

"Then she appears every night?" said I, hoping perhaps to hear that now and then, at however long intervals, a night passed without the visitation.

"Every night, as sure as the night

comes.

"And," I hesitatingly asked, "are you not at all afraid of her ?"

"Faith I'm not," replied the fellow, with a hardened laugh. "It's little use I'd be here, if I was. It's she, poor soul, that's afraid of me."

I was thunderstruck.

"And you must make her afraid of you too," he pursued, "or faith she'll make you afraid of her, sure enough; and if she sees that, you're a lost man. I see you're a gentleman that has no notion or understanding of these kind of things, and I can't think, at all at all, what made you come here. But I tell you, you mustn't let her think you're afraid of her, or you're done for. It's the eye does it all: keep a steady eye, if you can, and you'll manage her easy. A child could manage them, if it would keep a steady eye."

"But, dear me," pleaded I, "surely if I am afraid, she will know it, in spite of any efforts I may make to keep from showing it in my countenance. Surely it is impossible to deceive such a being."

"It isn't easy," replied the man ;

"but it isn't impossible all out. Still, I don't think you'll do it, and upon my soul, sir, I'm sorry to leave you in this house to-night. If I was a gentleman of your meek temper, I wouldn't be a night in this house for a thousand pounds. Good night, sir."

With these encouraging words he withdrew. I went to the door of the room, listened to his footsteps along the passage, down the winding stair, and then along the passage on the first floor. In the deep and echoing silence of the old house, I could catch the reverberations of his heavy tread, until he reached the hall below, and then I heard the huge house-door open and shut, and, a few moments after, the gig rumble slowly away.

I now resolved to make myself as comfortable as circumstances would admit, and to think as little as possible of where I was, and for what purpose. It would be too much to say that my opinions on the subject of apparitions were changed: they rested on far too solid a substratum of argument to be easily shaken. Still, the positive way in which the caretaker had spoken of seeing the club-footed lady made me feel odd, the more from the very easy way in which he had treated the matter, as if there were nothing at all in it to be wondered at. I could understand a fearful man's fancying that he saw ghosts, but this savage was not a bit afraid-nay, he boasted that the ghost was afraid of him. By what influence, then, could his imaginationa faculty seldom lively in people of his stamp-be worked up to the pitch necessary for such illusions? Did he, perhaps, drink? He looked not very unlike it. Yes; no doubt, he drank; that explained the mystery: the spirits by which he was haunted were not without but within him. A superstitious man-as all the lower order, and especially the Irish, were-and living in a house reputed to be hauntedwhat could be more natural, than that, when his senses were disordered by liquor, the confused impressions they gave him should assume the shapes with which the popular tradition taught him to believe himself surrounded, and that he should be ready to swear, when he came to himself again, that he had seen ghosts? Besides, habitual indulgence in intoxicating liquors produced a disposition to see spectres even

VOL. XXXI.-NO. CLXXXV.

when sober, and this man might, for anything I know, be the victim of a chronic delirium tremens. That would solve the riddle at once. I set it down, therefore, for a made-out thing, that Leary was a drinker, and felt considerably comforted in my mind by the establishment of the point.

Still more comforted did I feel after I had drawn a chair to the fire, thrown on a fresh shovelful of coals, unpacked my basket, drawn the cork of a bottle of Madeira, poured myself out a glass, tossed it off, poured out another, left that standing at my elbow, and then, snuffing my candles, and taking the last Maga out of my pocket, threw myself back in my chair, and stretched out my legs for a luxurious read. The fire was good, the Madeira better, Maga the best of all, and I basked, and sipped, and read, till really a very great tranquillity began to steal over my spirit, my pulse beat again in full unison with the pulse of my century, and I felt that I was doing a very enlightened thing, and dealing a heavy blow and a great discouragement to all superstitious and dark-age ideas, by being where I was, and doing what I did. It is true, that the silence of the great house would at times drag away my thoughts from the page before me, and lead them through the lonesome rooms and deserted passages which, I knew, were below, and above, and around me; and show them that drearily-echoing staircase again, and that hall with its age-blackened panelling, which lay between me and the door that shut out all human life but my own; and remind them of the dark depth that seemed to insulate the house, and of that grass-grown bridge which it had vainly thrown across, to the world that repudiated it, to tempt men with warm blood in their veins into its woe-stricken solitude. But these feelings were momentary, and every glass of Madeira contributed to widen the intervals between them-to make them fewer and farther between. In short, I was getting on extremely well in the haunted house.

At last, what with the fire, and what with the wine, in spite of Anthony Poplar, I fell asleep. I dreamt I was at Bleaklawns, and giving the Fenwicks a triumphant account of my enterprize, and that a deputation of the Wester Hiltonians, with the mayor at

2 P

its head, was come out to bring me the thanks and freedom of their town in a blue bandbox, when something, I don't know what, awaked me. For a moment I forgot where I was, but in a moment more I was fearfully reminded. Standing not three paces from me was a lady, whose face was white and still as death, and whose eyes gleamed with a peculiar vague brightness, staring at me in silence, and with an unchanging, stony expression, that made my own heart feel as if suddenly turned into stone. I knew it was the ghost. At first I tried to believe that I was still asleep, but could not accomplish it. Then I said, "It's the Madeira;" but I could not believe that rightly either. Then I looked down at the lady's feet-involuntarily, I must say; for I felt, the moment I had done it, that I had been guilty of a great breach of politeness. However, it was but a glance, and it was sufficient; there were the clubfeet, sure enough.

How I felt, words cannot tell. Amazement and desperate fear were, I think, the uppermost sensations-I call them sensations, for I had them in my nerves, and in my blood, as well as in my mind. I did not, for an instant, indulge the hope of making the ghost think I was not afraid of her, much less of making her afraid of me: I was conscious that it was out of the question, that it would be madness to think of it, and Leary's words, "She'll cow you, and then where will you be? -under her feet!" recurred to my mind with a terrible distinctness. I looked at her feet again.

"That's twice you've looked at them," said the ghost: "you'd better not do it a third time."

The voice was as unearthly as her aspect a strange, shrieking whisper, which sounded as if she drew in her breath when she spoke, instead of letting it out.

I was confounded: I tried to articulate something about not meaning any offence, but my voice stuck in my throat.

"Of course you are aware," said the lady, in the same tone, and after a short pause, "that I am the ghost of poor Miss Greenborn."

I was still voiceless, but, as she seemed to expect an answer, I bowed.

"There's a poor, foolish creature,"

proceeded she, "in Mr. Greenborn's other house, who fancies that she is the ghost. But she is not, for I am."

I bowed again.

"She's out of her wits," continued the apparition: "I frightened her out of them."

I must observe, that the ghost's countenance never changed, let the subject she spoke of be what it might. It assumed no expression of passionof pleasure or displeasure; but wore the same vague, troubled stare, that varied as little as if the features had been cast in marble.

"I have been expecting you long," resumed the spectre after another pause. "Indeed, ever since you died, I knew that sooner or later you would find your way to me. You are come, and we will part no more."

"God bless my soul!" murmured I, my voice beginning to return, but dying away again before I could say that I wasn't dead.

"No-in the world of which we are now both denizens," she pursued, "there are no partings: they who meet in this world are united for ever."

She paused again, and added, "We will haunt this house together-we shall be very happy."

Making a great effort, I now, in faltering accents, assured the lady that she was under a mistake, that I was not a ghost, not dead, but a gentleman residing in London, who, being on a visit in this neighbourhood, and hearing of the extraordinary things said in connexion with this house, had solicited and obtained Mr. Greenborn's permission to pass a night in it, for the satisfaction of a philosophical curiosity. I added, that I had never believed in ghosts before, but that this did not leave me a word to say.

"You are one of those unhappy spirits, I perceive," began the apparition, when I had done," who are in the dark as to their own identity. There are many such among the departed. They who have been faithless to their vows while living, are often punished by not knowing who they are when dead. This is your case. You have existed sixty years

"I beg your pardon," interrupted 1; "I'm not forty yet."

"You were not forty when you died," said she; "but you have been sixty years dead; and these sixty years

you have passed in a dream, believing yourself alive, believing yourself another person-a person, who, if he be living at all, might be your grandson. It is time to undeceive you. You are he who broke this faithful heart-this heart which, in the grave, still beats but for you. You are he who won this heart, and then flung it from him, and left it to break in loneliness. And for what? For these feet!"

She put one forward as she spoke, and I felt as I looked at it, that the faithless gentleman had not been so very much to blame.

"Feet," she continued, "which in China would be considered particularly handsome! But you are come back, and the truant, lost and blighted, shall to this bosom be taken once more. All is forgotten. Are you," she added, "a good rider ?"

"Pretty well," replied I, wondering what the drift of this question could be "nothing very extraordinary."

"I am," said she, "and will take you up behind me. We are but twelve miles from the Scottish border, and, on a black cat which I have below stairs, we shall be there in three quarters of an hour."

"God bless my soul !" exclaimed I; "I never rode on a black cat in all my life!"

"If you'd rather have a broomstick, say so," replied the ghost; "there's one in the house."

"I declare," said I, "I don't think I should make it out much better on the one than the other."

"Then a horse," said the ghost; "there's a horse in the stable which belongs to the live man, Leary. He will be unquiet under ghosts, but we shall manage to sit him, notwithstanding."

"But what are we to go to the Scottish border for ?" asked I, feeling a horrid anxiety taking possession of

me.

"To be married," answered the ghost.

"Oh, dear!" cried I; "I must really say"-and I stopped.

"What?" said the ghost.

"I am not the person you take me for," said I; "I am not, indeed; it's quite a mistake. I'm not dead-I never was dead in all my life; andI don't at all feel that I am the sort

of man-likely to make a ghost happy."

"Wait," said the ghost; "I perceive you are under an enchantment, and you will never know who you are till it is dissolved. Did you ever read the White Cat?'"

I replied in the affirmative.

"Do you remember how the princess in the tale was disenchanted?" "I think the prince cut off her head."

"He did; and you must be disenchanted in the same way. Just give me that knife you have in the basket there will you?"

I protested strenuously against the proposed treatment. She then said perhaps a finger would do, or my nose; but I expressed an unchangeable determination to retain both.

"I have it," said she; "there's a live woman in the house, who is very much in my way. You shall cut off her head, and we will fancy it yours; it will come to the same thing." "I wouldn't do such a thing for the world," cried I, excessively horrified ; "wouldn't the black cat's head do?"

"Mention such a thing again," said the ghost," and see what will happen to you. No; I know another means. The live woman is a witch; she has a wand, by means of which she has often greatly tormented and controlled me. She is now asleep; I will go fetch her wand, and disenchant you with it."

She stumped gravely away, leaving me a prey to the most indescribable tumult of feelings. It occurred to me that the best thing I could do would be to start off before she came back; and putting on my hat and great coat, I proceeded to put my design into execution. Taking a candle in my hand, and hastily swallowing a couple of glasses of Madeira, I stole out of the room, and along the passage, reached the winding-stair, hurried along the passage on the first floor, and was near the great staircase, when I met the ghost.

It was my own fault; if I had not stopped to drink those two glasses of Madeira, I should have been out of the house before she knew anything about it.

She held her right hand behind her back, and without expressing any surprise at meeting me, bid me take off my big coat. Of course I did not dare

to disobey.

She then directed me to take off my coat; this I also did. Upon this she shewed the hand which she had held behind her back, and in which was a very neat riding-whip.

"Do you know what that is?" said the apparition.

"It's a horsewhip," said I, feeling very queer.

"No," replied she, "that's a wand; and I must conjure you with this wand until you are disenchanted, and know who you are."

Without another word, she rained a perfect deluge of blows, with the cursed cutting-whip, upon my shoulders and arms. I made a run for the stairs, but she was before me, and turned me back, laying on all the while with an energy that I should never have given a disembodied spirit credit for. From time to time she asked if I was disenchanted yet, and if I still fancied myself to be alive; but I made no answer, partly because I could do nothing but shout with the pain, and partly because I saw plainly that there is no use in arguing with a

ghost, especially when it happens, besides, to be the ghost of a woman.

At last, making a fortunate plunge, I got at the stairs, and ran down. It was a happy circumstance for me that the ghost had club-feet, for it prevented her running quick enough to come up with me before I reached the door; and, although I did get a cut or two more while I was opening it, I scarcely felt them for the joy of being so nearly out of her clutches; nor did it in the least diminish the satisfaction with which I sprang down the steps that bridged the yawning area, to reflect that I had paid with my coat and hat for the curiosity which had led me to spend a night in a haunted house.

I went to the Greenborn Arms for that night, and set off next morning for London, having left a note for Harry Fenwick at Hilton, to say that I gave the nineteenth century.

up

Yet I don't know how it is-I sometimes suspect those little rascally boys made an April Fool of me, and brought me to the wrong house.