received and saw none of them except once good Mr. Seymour.

Mr. Seymour was shown into a small room that looked on the terrace; the old curtains and furniture that occupied it during the haunted days still stood round the walls; the old fashioned, high backed, oval chairs with their dim crumbling tapestry remained even undusted. On the table lay a Bible and a volume of Jeremy Taylor and Cosin's devotions; on another table a pencil, paints, and some brushes, a tumbler full of discoloured water, and a tall flower glass with a large white hyacinth which was gathered, and now lay in the water: the warm ray of the winter sun shone in about noon day through a window that opened down to the ground. Mr. Randall rose on Mr. Seymour's entrance; there was a melancholy about his manner, but the grasp of his hand was affectionate and kind.

The conversation was on general topics, and the moment Mr. Seymour tried to move to more definite subjects his companion recoiled.

Mr. Seymour rose to go, and in doing so he noticed on the table near the hyacinth a small red case, as if containing a miniature; he scarcely knew why he noticed it, but events in after days recalled it to his memory. This was the only visit which had ever succeeded in giving the visitor a sight of the mysterious stranger.

We may perhaps with that freedom which belongs to authors and critics enter into the secrecy and privacy of the chamber of this clergyman, and learn more of his personal history, than all the curiosity of old maids, or the other idle inhabitants of the village of

Brandon, retired tradesmen, and moneyed aristocrats, was able to ascertain.

Mr. Randall evidently was one around whom a cloud of mystery hung. "Often and often," as his old housekeeper had said, "Poor Master Henry" for she still called him Master Henry, having nursed him when he was a child, “would get out of bed, if ever he went to bed at all, and would walk about, bless him, for three hours in the passage by the moonlight; she was sure there was something unked in his history, if any one knew it, for besides his habit of walking about, she had heard him throw the window open in his own room in the dead of night, talking to the ghosts, with which his house was haunted, which it was her private belief was the case, for she had always noticed whenever these private conversations were held at the open window, her rushlight burnt blue." However, this was her private opinion, but as the public would not give credence to ghosts and such like, she had a second creed with respect to Mr. Randall's nocturnal adventures and struggles; and that was that some dark deeds had been committed by him in days gone by, which even she, with all her knowledge of Master Henry's character, had never found out. But, however, inasmuch as this second view injured "Master Henry," imputing to him criminal acts, and moreover impugned good Mrs. Humphrey's insight into character and the knowledge of her darling child's early life, she only announced this view to her own private and select friends at her evening soirées. These generally were composed of Mrs. Biggs the farmer's wife, and Mrs. Rogers the grocer's.

But I should be indeed belying my character as a faithful historian, if I were to forget, that Watson, the ladies' maid, "Watson," never Mrs. or Miss, but always "Watson the ladies' maid" from the hall was frequently

a member of these refined soirées.

Consequently, Mrs. Humphrey had to fall back on a third line of opinion, (though the least credited by Mrs. Humphrey, because the least romantic,) which inferred that poor Mr. Randall might after all be suffering from some blighted affection in early days, or some sad cloud of depression on his mind or spirits independent of criminal acts; or some religious sorrow, which like a cloud intervened between him and GoD's sun, for which he might be sighing in private and yearning after a change in his position. This after all may have been the complete solution of all the mysteriousness of his actions.

These various sentiments had oozed out through good Mrs. Humphrey's tea parties, through various parties in the village. Miss Teresa Rigby, a tall old maid of fifty-five, living on £75. 6. three per cent annuities, assured most solemnly, having locked the door double, Miss Betsey Tegg, another old maid, who always walked to church with her on Sunday, "that there was not the least doubt, for she had it from the best authority, that Mr. Randall had been seen struggling with a ghost by the above said good Mrs. Humphrey, who was looking through the keyhole at the moment, and that Mr. Randall had at last succeeded after desperate struggles in hurling the ghost out of window. Mrs. Humphreys had heard it fall amongst the laurel boughs." This

was the firm creed of that thin stream of good folk in Brandon, of whom the above said Miss Tegg, and Miss Teresa Rigby were the type.

The charge about some dark crime committed in former days, was believed by a much larger portion of the community; amongst others, by Mr. Philpot, a mercantile man, retired on £2000 per annum, who hated the clergy because they were an educated class: he only bowed to Mr. Randall when he met him in the road, and did not smile; he said that he and Mrs. Philpot knew things "they would not say for the world." He had inferred what the crime was, and only inferred it in the following manner.

One day after dinner, when men had been talking about "Eugene Aram," Bulwer's novel, and thought it was incredible, Mr. Philpot sighed deeply, and said he "wished it were," but said that "he feared even in their own small circle of society, there might be Eugene Arams;" and when good Miss Hudson, who sat next him, asked in a low voice, "if he did not mean Mr. Randall," good Mr. Philpot sighed again, drank a glass of port wine, and said nothing. Such was the creed of a certain portion of the inhabitants of Brandon, of whom Mr. Philpot was a type. There was a third portion, who if they believed anything, or thought they had any right to interfere in another man's private concerns at all, said that they believed the third of good Mrs. Humphrey's opinions was the true one, and that some unknown sorrow weighed on the poor clergyman's mind.

The following paper which we found on the clergy

D

man's table, when he was gone out, may throw light on

the mystery.

Whether this letter which we found in the capacity of our editorial or historical inquisitiveness was in the form actually of any letter to any individual, or whether it was simply a kind of soliloquy on paper of Mr. Randall's in some day or hour of loneliness or companionlessness, we do not know, for it had no address and no signature, but thus it ran :—

"Surely there are exceptions to the usual run of human beings; surely there are cases where the stream of life neither flows so softly or so brightly as with the generality; and if so, it must be that the great Creator of the universe has somewhere in His creation left room for the turbid waters to find their own way to the sea; some deep rocky channels, through which those wild eccentric waters may toss themselves to their rest. And if the good God has intended some such vent, that Body which is the expression of His will and arrangements on earth, the Church, should open out means for those torrents to find their exit. But to drop my allegory, such a turbid stream am I; I feel the torrent is rolling on to the sea, and will reach it at last, but by no ordinary channel can I reach heaven. awful thoughts brood over me like angry clouds. If I have ever loved deeply, those I have loved have been repelled in the hour of my most intense affection, by some wayward eccentricity of manner or speech; and ever when I have longed to draw to my yearning bosom some object which I longed till death to cherish there, it has been my doom to scare by my manner or my

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