asked Rosalind; "and who is this Philip, of whom you speak in terms of so great pity ?"

do

"Why to be sure, my lady, though you go very little amongst the inhabitants of the castle, you must have heard me speak of Philip Watkins; he was born in the same village where I was; it is he that you have heard me say got such a terrible thorn in his foot when he was getting me a blackbird's nest;-if you don't remember the story, I'll tell it you again any other time; only it has nothing to do with the ghost Philip saw to-night.

"Ghost!" echoed Rosalind, casting her eye involuntarily to the spot where she conceived that she had seen the appearance of a figure.

did

'Aye, my lady, a dreadful black ghost: you never in your life happen to see a ghost yourself?”

"No," replied Rosalind, "nor any one else, I believe, who had the courage to

convince their senses of the delusion which

they mistook for one."

"Oh, my lady," cried Gertrude, "don't say so; pray don't be so wicked; they don't belong to this world, and should be respected.-Old Ambrose the porter has seen it before; and Simon Williams saw it from the watch-tower last night; only I never heard of it till Philip was brought into the hall to-night in a fit at the sight of it. Pray don't stay here, my lady, pray don't; I dare not keep with you, indeed, if you do, for it was on this side of the castle that they both saw it walking ;" and away she ran towards the door in the turret which led to Rosalind's apartment, still calling upon her to follow.

Rosalind complied, for the night was far advanced, although its serenity would perhaps have tempted her to have walked longer, had she not been interrupted in the manner she had been. The moment Rosalind was within the turret, Gertrude,

who

who stood waiting her approach with a lamp in her hand, shut the door, and having fastened every bolt upon it, she exclaimed, “thank Heaven we are safe in the castle, and pray its goodness we may be safe, now we are in it."

With the utmost good humour, Rosalind chid her for her weak apprehensions, and endeavoured by every argument to reason her out of her alarm; but the occurrences of the evening were at present too strongly imprinted on the mind of Gertrude, for it to be divested of them by the the power of words only; and she pro

ceeded to relate her tale.

"You must know, my lady," she said, "that it is now three evenings ago, as old Ambrose was returning from the village, where he had been on a visit to his sister, the poor old woman, my lady, at the foot of the hill, that you may remember broke her leg the day she was eighty, and that every body thought must C 4 have

have died of it, and now she is quite finely again; is not it a wonderful recovery?"

"Yes, it is," answered Rosalind; "but proceed in your story without interruption."

"I am only explaining a little as I go on, my lady," resumed Gertrude. "Well, old Ambrose came hobbling along, he can't walk very fast, since he has had the rheumatism-looking down on the ground and picking his way for fear he should stumble; when just as he was turning the eastern angle of the castle moat, he happened to lift up his eyes, and there he saw, O mercy on us! a tall ghost, all in black from head to foot; and the moment he saw it, it vanished away from him in a noise like the hissing of serpents!"

Probably," said Rosalind, "the old man's alarm was occasioned by the shadow of a tree; and the motion of its leaves, agitated by the wind, created the rustling noise he heard."

"No,

"No, no, no, no, my lady," exclaimed Gertrude," he might have been deceived once, but last night he saw the very same appearance again, on the very spot where he had seen it before, and it vanished away from him again, just in the same manner; this was about eight o'clock in the evening:-and now it is come out that Simon Williams saw the very same spectre at midnight, stalking backwards and forwards before the eastern rampart, where you were walking this very night.-Heaven be praised I came, and called you away before the dreadful hour strikes."

Rosalind was silent-no faith in spirits was growing in her mind; but the information conveyed by Gertrude of the appearance of a figure in black near the rampart, seemed so strongly to vouch for her senses not having deceived her in regard to the dusky form which she had believed herself to have seen that night, that she could

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