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ghostesses, I should like to know?" retorted the old woman.

"If you think this Mr. Withers will take me in," said the pedestrian, "I should like to try him. I am not afraid of a ghost or two."

Fitzmaurice accordingly started for the Grange, a queer, old, rambling edifice, about a mile up the Avon, which ran at the foot of one of its walls. The beauty of the river had not tempted the architect to make a single window in this tall, black wall --the only opening being a water-gate, barred by a portcullis. The whole building formed an irregular pentagon, and was surrounded by a moat. It was of considerable extent; and Fitzmaurice, when admitted, which took some little time, found that the central space was occupied by haystacks, barns, and straw-yard, and the other appurtenances of a large farm. Originally a fortified house, the Grange had come a farmstead. The result was describably picturesque. A paint would have delighted to render t it strange interior. The house itself was most irregular in all its developments. Along one side, looking down upon the enclosures, was a quaint old wooden gallery, which looked as if the lightest step must bring it down.

Fitzmaurice soon found Mr. Withers, a fine old gentleman of between sixty and seventy, middle-sized, upright as a bolt, ruddy as a well-kept apple, garrulous as a magpie.

"You're just in time for supper," he said; (it was then six o'clock). "As for a bed, why you could have a dozen if you wanted them; but there are some people that don't like sleeping in my house."

"Why not?" asked Fitzmaurice. "Oh, they talk about ghosts. I never saw a ghost, and don't care whether I do or not. You don't look as if you cared much about 'em. Never saw one, I dare say. Come along-let's have supper."

He led the way into a great hall, the whole height of the building, rafter-roofed. Though it was a warm summer evening, a wood fire was burning in the enormous hearth. A long wooden table ran up the centre of the hall; and a penny-a-liner would tell us that it groaned with the cold rounds and sirloins of beef, the mighty bowls of steaming pota

toes, the huge double Gloucester cheeses, which stood upon it. At the upper end only there was a white cloth.

As they entered, a bell rang without, and in an instant the servants of the house and farm, male and female, were seated at the table. Farmer Withers led his guest to the upper end, where a dainty young damsel of seventeen or eighteen was shyly standing.

"That's my granddaughter, Nelly, Mr. Fitzmaurice. A good wench enough, but not much use in a house. Ah, you should have known her mother; she was a woman. When my poor boy Dick

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The old gentleman might have gone on for a week, but the girl touched him, and said

"Grandfather, grace!"

For the whole of his dependents,. hungrily eyeing the cold beef and steaming potatoes, were waiting for this ceremony. Farmer Withers said a grace of prodigious length, after which the assembly set to with a will.

Fitzmaurice found the cold sirloin delicious and the strong ale unsurpassable. He thought himself in luck. Miss Nelly would hardly exchange a word with him, though she glanced at him furtively now and then. She had probably never seen an English gentleman before: Old Withers, however, talked enough for a whole family.

"You like the beef, do ye? Shows your taste. Loin out o' one o' the best shorthorn oxen I ever killed-and that's saying something, as they'll tell you in Sarum. And the ale's none so bad. Why, I've been brewing ale this fifty year at the Oak at Westbury: kept the Oak till the old man died, vour years ago last Candlemas. He used to say he didn't want a young vullow caddling about here all day. Called me a young vullow: ha, ha, ha! Why they do call me young Mister Harry, down to Westbury, now."

And the old gentleman went off into a roar of laughter, which his servants heartily joined. It was a standing joke, doubtless, this about "young Mister Harry."

Supper over, and the great hall cleared, Farmer Withers invited his guest to the settle, which was placed within the hearth. You might have

backed a loaded cart into that vast aposture. High above his head, Fitzmaurice could see suspended hains and sales of bicon, getting that gradual smoking which gives to them a flavour unrivaled. Pipes were produced, and glasses; and then the old farmer said to his granddaughter

"Get thee to bed, wench. The gentleman and I 'uld have some toddy and a talk.'

And this was at about half past seven on a fine summer evening. Fitzmaurice was perfectly amazed at a style of life so new to him. Here were people who actually went to bed just when he was wont to dine.

They had both toddy and a talk, during which Farmer Withers contrived to tell his guest all his family alairs, so that Fitzmaurice became qualitied to write the lives of all the Witherses for several generations, As the hall clock struck nine, the old farmer got up, yawned tremendously, and led the way towards the bedroom. In five minutes Fitzmaurice had sunk deeply into a bed of down, fragrant of lavender; in five more he was fast asleep. He saw no "ghostesses;" indeed he was unconscious of all things till a bell rang clamor ously from one of the turrets, and he found it was four o'clock. Then he remembered that the Gange breakfast was at five. *

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The yard was alive in the grey summer morning. Cows were being miked, pigs, poultry, and pigens feil. The old fa.mer, in his blue coat with brass buttons, knee breeches, and gaiters, was looking after everybiy and every thing “Oculus dorim #hant perm was his motto, evidently. His granddreighter was milking a troublesome hitte Alderney, as the and skittish as a fy. Fitzmaurice found that his roon had a door opening on the old wooden balcony already described; so he waked out and stood there, much, annsed at the scene before him. Wien Withers saw him, he exe' med

**The old gallery's hardly safe, for Petter not trust it your weight These words aroused Nelly's attentren, and he gave a su.all scream; where up the Alloney, 2'ad of an opportunity.: keq over the mik pail, pretty makmaid herself, ged an old woman

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who, with yoke on shoulder, was carrying two buckets of wash to the pigs. Farmer Withers burst into a ht of laughter which had not terminated when they sat down to breakfast. Nelly was laughing too : I dare say her favourite Alderney was in the habit of kicking her over occasionally. At breakfast the whole establishment mustered, as at supper; and Fitzmaurice thoroughly enjoyed the rich cream, the yellow butter, the hot cakes baked upon the hearth.

Then Withers and his guest turned out to see the farm a large one, much of it downland, devoted to sheep. The farmer used to boast that he could beat the Southdowns. The two acquaintances trudged for some hours over the undulating ridges, classic ground for those who delight in King Alfred the Truthteller. At twelve they were back to dinner; but meanwhile the farmer had induced Fitzmaurice (nothing loth to stay with him at least a week. As for the dinner, it was colossal. The huge rounds and sirloins were hot, now; here and there a leg of mutton intervened; the great wooden bowls of potatoes were supplemented by similar masses of cabbage and turnips. Above the salt a couple of roast capons did honour to the guest.

That evening, after supper, the farmer talked about the ghosts of the Grange.

"There be two or three," he said. "There's one in the old loft that used to be best bedroom-a man with his throat cut, standing at the window. And a woman that walks about this old hall of nights: they Ray she starved one of her own daughters to death. And there's a footstep walks up and down yon old gallery outside where you sleep; but nobody ever saw nothing; and I think a ghost 'ud bring down the rotten old concern. But you know I don't believe a word of such stuff.”

And, to change the subject, the old man wound up the evening by singing right lustily a song with this chorus

“Ah! ïe me, if I wer a squier,

The settle an' the girt wood vier "**

Fitzmaurice fell asleep easily enough, but woke to find the moonEght floding his room The turret click was striking twelve. Perfect

silence followed; but suddenly he fancied that he heard a footstep on the gallery. He laughed at the idea, as a trick of the imagination. But the sound continued; and he saw, or thought he saw, a form pass his window. Certainly some kind of shadow crossed the curtain-a cloud crossing the moon, perhaps. He rose, drew the curtains aside, and returned to his bed. Again the sound-again the form a woman, in her night dress. Fitzmaurice immediately suspected a practical joke.

But, then, he reflected on the wellknown antiquity of the balcony. Would any of the maid-servants venture on that ricketty old gallery just for the sake of frightening a stranger? All at once it occurred to him that it might just possibly be a case of sleepwalking. Upon this, with as little dressing as possible, he very quietly opened the old door, and stood in the shade to watch for the apparition. It came, slowly and demurely; the face was visible in the clear moonlight, with unconscious eyes wide open it was Nelly Withers, taking a stroll in her sleep, while the old gallery trembled under her trifling weight.

What was he to do? The balcony was evidently in most perilous plight, Should he stop her as she passed, and drag her into the room? Should he try to take her to her own? He would have to guess at its position; but he assumed that the door to the gallery would probably be open. He decided on this as the best course, and when next she passed, caught her in his arms, strode rapidly along the creak ing woodwork, and sprang with her into the first open door he reached. Hardly had his foot left the gallery, when, with a mighty crash, the rotten structure fell into the yard below. But the girl did not wake.

Fitzmaurice placed her on her bed, and went to the other door. It was locked, and the key gone. Here was a position! The moonlight was not bright enough for him to search the young lady's chamber for the key; and the whole establishment was already aroused by the tremendous crash caused by the fallen gallery. Fitzmaurice was looking downwards, to see if it were practicable to drop into the yard, when there came a tre

mendous knocking at the door, and old Withers exclaimed"Let me in, will you?" "Can't find the key," said Fitzmaurice.

The noise woke Nelly, who, seeing a man in her room, burst into a passion of tears. The old farmer gave the door a kick, which broke its fastenings, and appeared before Fitzmaurice, fiery and indignant, in shirtsleeves and knee-breeches, with a huge lantern in his hand.

"So, sir, here you are! I thought you were a gentleman. What are you doing with my little girl?"

Behind the fiery little farmer Fitzmaurice could see a crowd of half-dressed girls and slouching labourers, all in the highest state of excitement. And Nelly was weeping as if her heart would break.

Now to be found locked into a lady's room at midnight, in an undignified state of dishabille, is rather trying; and it is awkward to have nothing except a somewhat improbable story to offer against a circumstantial array of probabilities. But Fitzmaurice was extremely cool; and he made his statement in so straightforward and truthful a manner that old Withers could not help being convinced.

"Well," he said, "to think of the wench walking in her sleep. She got it from that flighty mother of hers, I'll warrant. She was the ghost on the gallery all the time, I'll be bound.”

The next morning at breakfast Miss Nelly was hardly so composed as when she had been upset by her Alderney. So Fitzmaurice set to work to make her feel more at her ease; and the result was, that he found the little girl, her shyness conquered, extremely interesting and naire. To him, accustomed to the belles of the ball-room, this unspoilt child of the wild Wilts wold seemed perfectly charming. Thus it happened that, before he left the Grange, he fancied himself a little in love with her. She, poor child, was madly in love with him.

But Fitzmaurice went away, finished his tour, returned to his old society, his old pursuits, and thought very little more about Nelly. She, after a month or two's vain longing

for some news of him, gave him up altogether, and tried to forget him. The child had become a woman when love was born in her breast; impossible to recross that fatal stream which divides the fairyland of childhood from the world.

About a year had passed when Fitzmaurice had one night a very vivid dream. He fancied he was again traversing that wooden gallery, with the pretty somnambulist in his arms. It recalled so strongly his Wiltshire adventures that he said to himself

"I wonder how old Withers is get ting on, and that little wench of his. I think I'll go down and see.”

He went by rul to Salisbury, hired a horse, and rode over. As he came to the Grange, a mournful procession was leaving its ancient gateway. "Young Mister Henry" was being carried to the churchyard: and foremost among the mourners 'it is a rural custom was poor Nelly, under an immense black cloak, bitterly

weeping

There were various relations and offcial persons in the house; but Fitzmaurice contrived to have an in

terview with Nelly alone. He had ascertained from a shrewd old lawyer that she was wholly unprovided for. The estate was entailed on the male descendants; and old Withers, always intending to put something by for his granddaughter, had never done it.

"She'll have to go to service," said a rugged old relation who stood by ; "she baint fit for nought else, that wench."

"Well, Miss Withers, said Fitzmaurice, as he entered a mouldy parlour in which she sat alone, I am truly sorry for your great loss. Is there anything I can do for you?”

She was seated on a huge chintzcovered sofa, her elbows on her knees, her pretty head buried in her clasped hands. She sobbed, but made no reply.

Nelly," said Fitzmaurice, coming nearer, "tell me I cannot remain here long what can I do for you f"

She fell suddenly at his feet, embracing his knees, as Lycaon did the knees of Achimies, exclaim.ng-

"I thought you loved me! I thought you loved me!" That finished him.

CHAPTER IX.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”—Shakespeare.

"THE Earl of Riverdale and Lady
Vivian Ashleigh are at the Beltord
Hotel, Brigi ton,”

“Mr. Luttrel, MP., is at Pegg's Royal York Hotel, Brighton."

Such were two of the early fashion able announcements wherewith the Londoner, during its brief and bright career, lacersted the heart of the editor of the Morning Post.

Pegg, and Brill, and Harrison, all thought of retiring on their fortunes. The Grand Hotel was full.

Ludy Vivian did not much like Brigiton. In her judgment there were very few ladies, in the highest sense of the word, among the dashing horsewomen of the King's road. Sie intensely disked the crowded afternoon promenade, in which everybody dresses to death, and where you'cbow a mob of men and women of every conceivable class. But the Earl hid taken a fancy for just one week at Brighton, at d so his dutiful

For it was October, and the Brighton mason approa Led its zenith. The Kings road was fuser than Regent street. The lodging home keepers were making fortunes, The riding in, asters could hardly fid-dangi ter allowed him to come. It enough, eju strian assistants to tãe charge of their lady par The Retuschade, and Gods: lds, and Bar ings were all tière. Gan's turnt and lobsters, and red mudet from the Arun estuary, rome day in pe Lantott begaŭ to fear jest the South downs should be exhan, sted. Harry

would puzzle a purdit to say why Guy Luttrel was there: he certamy d not know himself. Being there, however, he was wont to take a boat every morning, and go out for a dip the Chay man in Brighton, ↑ T. 15, wh worshipped Poseidon in October. One afttisol, Luttrel was liter

ing along the promenade, when a garrulous acquaintance joined him. As he is a minor personage in this epos, let me call him Smith, though I firmly believe Guy would not have condescended to know any man named Smith, unless he were an elector of Riverdale.

"I wish you'd come to my rooms this evening," said the pseudo Smith: "Professor Odysseus is to be there." "Who the deuce is Professor Odysseus? Man who wrote the 'Odyssey?'" "He's a wonderful spiritualist-a Greek, from Naxos."

"Ariadne's island. Pshaw, my dear fellow, you don't expect me to believe in such nonsense." "Well, I wish you'd come. I hold Mansion, you know, and so does he. We are all of us going to meet this evening to see what he can do. He's going to dine with me first. Come and dine."

out at

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Can't, my boy. But who are

'all of us'?"

"Oh, there's a lot of families living in the house, and we're going to have a reunion."

"Well, it will be amusing," said Luttrel. "I tell you what. I'll come in and have a cup of coffee with you and the Greek about nine." He came. Professor Odysseus was a Lilliputian man, who might be any age. His hair was very light and very long. He wore a black velvet suit, lace raffles, knee-breeches, white silk stockings, diamond-buckled shoes. Behind his chair stood his page, a blooming beardless boy, dressed as if he had just stepped out of a picture by Watteau. As they sat over their coffee and chasse, he lectured a little. "All I can do," said the Professor, "is to magnetize the atmosphere. This enables any spirit which comes into the circle to manifest itself. It is an error to suppose that only the spirits of the dead may arise; perhaps more frequently the spirits of the living visit us. It depends chiefly on the will of the audience -especially of the female audience. Men seldom concentrate their wishes; but there is scarcely a woman living who has not some single wish which she wishes intensely and always. So, at what we call a séance, the spirits summoned are generally those whom the women present desire to

see. I am not at all responsible for the results which follow. And those results are often peculiar; for a spirit, divested of its flesh and blood, utterly irresponsible, plays pranks which in its human form it would not dare to play. If a séance is full of foolish manifestations-of silly tricks with ropes and musical instruments-it simply shows that the acquaintances, dead or alive, of the persons present, are chiefly fools."

"Very philosophical, Professor," said Guy. "Do you work in the dark?"

"By no means. Spiridion, bring the lamp."

And the page placed on the table an elegant bronze lamp, which, by the uncoiling of a watch spring, was fed regularly with magnesium wire, whence a light almost equal to Phoebus Apollo's own.

"Fortunate," said the pseudo Smith, "for the gas in Brighton is abominable."

"Do any of your questionable visitors pretend to divine the future ?" asked Guy.

"If you could call up Cassandra,” said Odysseus, "or Mademoiselle le Normand, you might get a reply. If there is any question you want answered, dwell upon it with a strong effort of will. An answer may, perhaps, be written."

Séances differ widely in character you say?"

"Yes; they are sometimes foolish and frivolous, sometimes almost sublime. I was once asked by a lady, a collateral descendant of the poet Milton, to come to her house. She has devoted herself to his memory; has written out the whole of his works on vellum, with superb illuminations. Of course, when the atmosphere was magnetized, she eagerly and earnestly wished for his coming. He came. The vellum volume lay open on the table; it was turned back to the fly leaf, and a pen wrote his name upon the white paper. There was an organ in the room, on which a soft sad voluntary was played. And when this was over, the lady felt a hand passed slowly over her hair, and the pressure of lips upon her brow."

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"Well," said Guy, inwardly incredulous, we shall see what happens to-night."

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