guished the sounds of feet flying as did those of the suicide, when he was driven frantic from the cottage window on discovering me reposing so calmly on my bed. For he had come with the intention of seeking me, and pouring his secret into my bosom: but despair seized on him at sight of my tranquil confidence; and his next impulse was to place the fatal pistol to his breast.

66

By degrees I grew drowsy-the book dropped from my hand-the lamp was dying beside me—a lurid glare was around my eyes, which had been half closed, opened suddenly wide-I gazed at the foot of the bed, and I there saw the ghastly and bloody figure of the suicide kneeling with uplifted hands and glazed eyes fixed upon me—and I could not move a limb. I would have shut out the fearful object, but my lids refused to close. I felt the eye-balls starting from their sockets. I strove to cover my head with the bed-clothes, but the spectre leaning against them, held them fast. At length a shower of perspiration, cold and clammy, burst from all my pores. I was relieved, though exhausted; and already my eyes became familiarised to the horrid object. I rose up in the bed, and stepped upon the floor. I made the sign of the cross; but the spectre did not disappear. I repeated more. than one prayer; but still it knelt, following me with its leaden gaze. I confess that in my terror the memory of some old superstition, profane, if not blasphemous, crossed my mind; and I muttered, in fear and trembling, some absurd incantations that I learned in boyhood, for exorcising spirits. The spectre stirred not, but a loathsome grin spread across the livid and blood-stained face. At this sight I raised my hands above my head; and I felt the hair stand up on end against my palms, my knees tottered, and my teeth chattered. The spectre seemed to chuckle inwardly, for it shook and grinned—but no sound escaped it.

"Good God!' cried I, 'I am beset by a fiend--the evil one has thrown himself before me-I am caught in the snare!' The spectre nodded its hideous head, as if in confirmation

of my fears. I strove to scream, not exactly for help, for I felt myself hopeless; but in the despairing notion that I might scare away the ghost. My throat was parched-the voice was choked in its attempt at utterance. The spectre never turned its eyes from me, nor relaxed its grin. Can I ever forget that basilisk glance ?

"After standing thus for some minutes, all the energy of my despair was aroused, and I prepared to rush through the doorway which was close at the foot of my bed. But the spectre knelt directly across, and whole mountains of adamant had not formed a more impassable barrier than did that horrid shade. I stood again transfixed. Again I prayed; and still the spectre mocked me. It seemed fixed to the place for ever. I heard the village clock strike the hour-it was two. I strove to turn my head towards the window, hoping to see the dawn. I could not move it-the frightful attraction before me kept it firm fixed.

"The quarter struck. I thought an age had elapsed since the tolling of the hour. Another quarter-another—another! Oh, that eternity of horror! The clock struck three-long, solemn peals, that roused the country for leagues; but the spectre stirred not yet. I saw the dawn. The sunbeams that entered behind me at the window stole gradually along the wall at either side; and at length the yellow light fell full upon the spectre, and gilded its odious aspect with a tinge of horrible splendour. The sunbeams shot through it, proving it to be a phantom-yet it maintained all the dreadful reality of matter. Every nerve and fibre of the fleshless form was displayed to me. It was already a half-formed skeleton. I sickened with disgust, and flung myself back upon a chair close to the window. The morning air breathed on me, and I recovered. I heard the cock crow. My heart throbbed with rapture at this summons. I looked to observe the spectre vanish; but it only grinned again, and mocked me with horrid grimaces. I thought of escaping by the window, but as I attempted to rise, I felt as though held down by an immovable

weight of lead. My breast heaved and panted; and I felt suffocating.

"Holy Mary, thought I, can this indeed be real? Surely I sleep-this phantom is only of my brain! At this moment I heard some one in the garden. I made an effort, in desperate delight, to turn my eyes. I did so, and saw the old gardener hobbling across the walk. I was resolved to speak if possible. Another forcible attempt at utterance succeeded. I bade old Simeon good morrow! Good morrow, reverend father,' said the pious old man : your reverence is up betimes.' It is, it must have been a dream, said I, and I turned my eyes boldly in the direction of my bed. God! how I thrilled with agony at seeing the spectre unmoved from its position, unchanged in attitude and look! Reason and fear (that so often o'ermasters reason) combined together to give me almost more than mortal energy-I will not believe this, cried I aloud—I cannot, dare not support it-I am going mad!--Heaven save and protect me, and give me grace under this terrible affliction! Or do I indeed sleep, in spite of all this evidence of waking sensation? Do I, can I indeed sleep? With a wild throb of ecstasy at the revived hope that I slept, I seized in a paroxysm of agitation the water-jug that stood on my table. awake me, if indeed I sleep, exclaimed I, and I flung the whole contents in my face.

This will

"A convulsive and half suffocating sensation in my throat, and a fierce start from the chair on which I sat, were the instant consequences. At the same moment a burst of feeble laughter from a well-known voice broke on my ear. I looked forwards with all my eyes. The spectre had vanished, and I saw in its stead the figure of my own old female attendant standing before me. But in a moment her laugh was followed by a cry of terror. I looked into the glass beside me, and saw with horror, almost equal to hers, that I was covered with blood.

"In an instant I understood the whole appalling pageant. I had indeed been in that state of animated stupor, that doubt

ful, double existence, between reality and imagination, when the mind and body are half insensible and half alive. Such was the state of my feelings, at once excited and exhausted. And oh, that such may never be the lot of any human being! A night like that is an eternity of misery-a purgatory upon earth a living hell! But I must not dwell on the subject, its recurrence is horrible—I must let the memory of that dreadful scene moulder away from my brain, as the remnant of that wretched hovel is crumbling in the winds!"

Such was in substance, and nearly word for word, the curé's recital. I confess it made me thrill in the spoken detail. How it may tell on paper, I cannot venture to surmise. But my readers, let them think of it as they may, must not cavil at its title, nor accuse it of promising more than I meant it to perform :-for while I knew I was about to tell a real ghost story," I never intended to say it was the story of a real ghost.

66

THE THREE KEARNEYS.

BY ANDREW PICKEN.

It was a sad gliff that, that I once got by an affair that occurred in the Irish country while I took up my abode there, and it put my nerves more out of the way than I can well describe now as I am only recollecting the matter as a by-past fact. But such a sight as a father and two sons, an old grey-headed man, and I may say his whole family, going all together, as I saw them go past my door, and in my view, and that of thousands, is such as I hope never to see the like of again; although I do not think that the world is growing better in these last days, half so fast as I could wish it should. Indeed, I am of opinion, that the world must still be a bad world, for all the pains that have been taken with it, else such things could never have happened as I am now musing over, and which makes my heart ache to think of. If any one wishes to know what the affair was, let them sit down with me, and I will tell them as well as I can the whole story.

It was, while I was living within the interior precincts of the flaunting city of Dublin, in the Irish kingdom, that I first began seriously to make my observations on things in general: so wandering to and fro to observe the city, as much as possible, at a distance, rather than in its inner embraces, my walks lay often in those southern environs of the place, that spread off so pleasantly towards the green sloping hills, joining the King's county, which the Irish, in their usual boastful phraseology, choose to dignify by the name of the Dublin moun