Notwithstanding of this interruption, the Colonel continued his walk along the room. He was disturbed, anxious, and tremulous. The prior arguments he had used for the purpose of satisfying himself that there was no mysterious final cause in the phenomenon were discharged. The conviction settled deeper and firmer that he was obnoxious to powers who had taken his wife under their protection, and his failure of duty in not taking means to watch her grave added its remorse to the self-imputation that he had caused her death. He was, in short, under the influence of that feeling of awe -sufficient to make the boldest of us quake—that he was a particular object selected by divine power for a particular retribution. Like him who slept below the tripod of Apollo, he knew that he had the gods for his masters, and was able by their inspiration to divine his own ruin. Yet, could he not ward off his impending fate by a late repentance and an obedience to the angry spirit who had visited him. While still engaged in these thoughts the door opened, and there entered a young man, who, as a student-assistant to Dr Russel, was present at the amputation of the toe. His name was Davidson, and the object of his visit now was to bring some medicines which the doctor had prescribed for his widower patient. The presence of the student presented an opportunity, suggested by the thoughts which had been passing through his mind.

66

Stop," he said, as the young man was about to depart, after laying down the parcel; "you may do me more good than these drugs, which, alas! cannot minister to the mind.

"Whatever I can," replied Davidson, in something like wonder at being thus selected as a doctor on moral ailments, of which he had but small experience during the time he had been in the world.

"Is it true," said the Colonel, as he fixed his somewhat nervous eye on the student's face, "that dead bodies are stolen from the churchyards in this country?"

"I am not just the person you should ask,” replied Davidson. "You know I study anatomy myself, and we must get our knowledge somehow; besides, I am afraid to alarm you."

"Alarm me !" cried the Colonel. "What do you mean? Have you any reason to suspect anything in regard to Mrs Corbet?"

"Not particularly," was the answer, in a tone which indicated that the interrogated had no particular desire to set the Colonel's suspicions to rest.

"Not particularly!" rejoined the questioner, as he laid his hand on the student's arm. "The words are not satisfactory. Have you any reason," he continued, in a voice which betrayed emotion, "for your halting answer? Have you ever seen the body in any of the

rooms?"

"One cannot say," replied the youth, with the same calm pertinacity; "they are so changed, you know."

"Yes," said the Colonel, as he tried to keep down his voice; "but there is an unmistakeable mark in the case we are speaking of. You were present at the amputation ?"

"The small toe of the left foot-I mean the want of it," rejoined

the student, "would be a good mark if one went for the purpose of identification; but, you know, we don't go to identify subjects, and then the small toe is so very small an affair, that one is apt to overlook it."

"At least," cried the Colonel, somewhat impatiently, "you have met no such body?”

"I think not," was the reply, but with a smile, which the Colonel no doubt thought very inopportune. "If there had been six toes in place of four, one might have been more certain; and I need not say that if there had been seven, one would have been more certain still, and--”

But the Colonel, suspecting the student was proceeding to the eight, which probably he had no intention of, stopped him, with a request to the effect that if he should meet with any body which appeared to be that of Mrs Corbet, he would lose no time in communicating to him the fact.

"That would be as nearly as possible a matter of course," replied Davidson, with still more of a smile on his sinister face; "but, in the meantime, you should keep an eye upon the green tumulus in the Canongate, and if you find that the turf, especially about the head of the grave, has been disturbed, we might be led to expect something in the rooms."

"I intend to visit the spot to-morrow," said the Colonel; and, with a deep heaving of the breast, "I have delayed that duty too long."

"You had better pay a visit to that quarter to-night,” added the youth.

"There is no moon," rejoined the Colonel. "I could see nothing in the dark."

"There is such a thing as a lantern," was the quick reply; "and, after all, it is perhaps as well if you can avoid the sexton. These gentry are our best friends."

"I will perform the duty," said the Colonel, speaking perhaps as much to himself as to the student. "It is imperative.”

"At what hour?" asked the youth-a question a little more particular than the answers he had given to the Colonel's interrogation ; but the Colonel, concerned with deeper thoughts, did not mark the difference.

"About ten," he replied; "but how am I to get entry?" "Over the low north wall," was the reply.

And the youth, having thus so far satisfied the Colonel, and perhaps to some extent himself, went away, leaving the solitary occupant of the room under the fear that that solitude would be interfered with by the same bodiless companion who had taken the trouble of visiting him twice that day; but whether it was that, as he lay on the sofa, he gazed with more earnestness into the empty space about him than was consistent with the modesty of these susceptible creatures, or that now he had resolved on conciliating the angry spirit by obedience, certain it is that he did not see the image again that night. The intermediate hours were solemn and heavy, nor had

he any wish even to try to lighten them, for he was in that selfishness of misery which throws its gloom over all thoughts that are happy, so as to assimilate them to its own condition. So at halfpast nine he made ready his lantern,—an article then much in use, -and wrapping himself up in a large cloak, proceeded to the burying-ground, which he had not visited since that day—known to many of earth's mourners as the true dies ira which engulphs the happiness of a life-on which he committed his wife's body to the earth. Nor was he long in getting to the side of the "little hillock," which has in its bosom a story more wonderful than that which might be told by the mountains "earthquake-born." Having made sure of the object, which he knew from the relation it held to a white marble headstone of another grave by the side, he sat down on a tablet covered with green mould, and began to direct the light of the lantern to the tumulus. The beam was made to traverse the joining of the sods, in order that he might discover whether any crevice gave indication of external disturbance. And thus amid the darkness and silence, with bent head and peering eyes he was engaged in this piety of grief for the best part of a quarter of an hour. Regaining his upright position, he got into meditation. He was in the midst of the dead-many of them in their new shrouds, those marriage dresses of death's brides not yet soiled. Even his wife would yet have undergone little change, and thus he conjured up to the eye of his fancy all those children of mortality, who, a little time before, were, as he himself was now, instinct with life, lying extended in their small habitations silent and motionless; yet the consciousness of the presence of these was as nothing to the awe which overshaded him as he thought that the place and the hour were propitious to another visit from his spiritual monitor. He felt unnerved, and even took the precaution of turning the light of the lantern upon his own face, as if thereby he might shut out the lesser light of the apparition; but the moment his face shone amid the darkness, he was startled by the sound of a voice, which behoved to be sepulchral among so many graves. The sound was distinctly articulate, and the words, "Colonel Corbet."

When a man hears his name pronounced as a salutation, he will naturally doubtless turn his eye to the source of the sound; and so would the Colonel on the instant, if it had not been that he was doing his best by holding the lantern to his face to keep away the object of his dread, and somehow or other he confusedly mixed up the party, whoever it might be, that had pronounced the words and the apparition of his wife. A very little power of thinking would have satisfied him that if Mrs Corbet's spirit chose to address her husband, she would have used the same kind of voice which was her natural and peculiar gift when alive, and that the voice he had heard was not at all in that key, if indeed it did not very clearly come from a man ; but then it just happened that he had not the power of comparison, and then, we all know, the effect of fear in the transmutation of appearances is not more than in that of sounds. So he felt himself in that most unsoldier-like attitude of being irresolute-inclined to turn