Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentlemen should die; or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me to take its place for ever and ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm?  Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all eternity?  Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives till the end of time?  As the day of my death draws nearer, the intense horror that all living flesh feels towards escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and more powerful.  It is an awful thing to go down quick among the dead with scarcely one half of your life completed.  It is a thousand times more awful to wait as I do in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable terror.  Pity me, at least on the score of my “delusion,” for I know you will never believe what I have written here.  Yet as surely as ever a man was done to death by the Powers of Darkness I am that man.

In justice, too, pity her.  For as surely as ever woman was killed by man, I killed Mrs. Wessington.  And the last portion of my punishment is even now upon me.

THE RIVAL GHOSTS

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

The good ship sped on her way across the calm Atlantic.  It was an outward passage, according to the little charts which the company had charily distributed, but most of the passengers were homeward bound, after a summer of rest and recreation, and they were counting the days before they might hope to see Fire Island Light.  On the lee side of the boat, comfortably sheltered from the wind, and just by the door of the captain’s room (which was theirs during the day), sat a little group of returning Americans.  The Duchess (she was down on the purser’s list as Mrs. Martin, but her friends and familiars called her the Duchess of Washington Square) and Baby Van Rensselaer (she was quite old enough to vote, had her sex been entitled to that duty, but as the younger of two sisters she was still the baby of the family)—­the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer were discussing the pleasant English voice and the not unpleasant English accent of a manly young lordling who was going to America for sport.  Uncle Larry and Dear Jones were enticing each other into a bet on the ship’s run of the morrow.

“I’ll give you two to one she don’t make 420,” said Dear Jones.

“I’ll take it,” answered Uncle Larry.  “We made 427 the fifth day last year.”  It was Uncle Larry’s seventeenth visit to Europe, and this was therefore his thirty-fourth voyage.

“And when did you get in?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer.  “I don’t care a bit about the run, so long as we get in soon.”

“We crossed the bar Sunday night, just seven days after we left Queenstown, and we dropped anchor off Quarantine at three o’clock on Monday morning.”

“I hope we shan’t do that this time.  I can’t seem to sleep any when the boat stops.”