As the Doctor uttered these words, he went to the bookshelf and drew down a book bound carefully in calf, which he opened and passed to me.  It was the original copy as he had found it, his own work crossed out just as he had said, and the Service written in an altogether strange hand.

“I took those letters, R.I.P., to impose a solemn obligation upon me,” continued the Doctor.  “The Service was at length restored, and I felt sure that if it were used his soul would rest in peace.  That is why we have it here every Easter Sunday.  It has become, in fact, quite a tradition of the cathedral, which I hope no future organist will ever depart from.  The apparition has never since appeared, so I take it that was evidently the wish expressed, and the reason why the old man’s ghost for so many years haunted the scene of his former labours.”

* * * * *

This story is finished.  I leave it just as the Doctor related it.  Do I believe it?  Undoubtedly I do, but all explanation I leave as impossible.  Perhaps some day we shall know better the relation existing between the material world and the unknown.  At present the subject is best left alone.  Facts we must accept, our imperfect knowledge prevents their explanation.

JOHN GRAEME.

THE ONLY SON OF HIS MOTHER.

BY LETITIA MCCLINTOCK.

“Dear Mrs. Archer, be consoled; I promise to stand by Henry as if he were my brother.  Indeed, I look upon him quite as my brother, having no near ties of my own.”

“God bless you for the promise,” said Mrs. Archer.  “You are better to Henry than any brother could be.  Thy love is wonderful, passing the love of woman.”

Mrs. Archer, the widowed mother of an only child, was deeply imbued with sacred lore.  No great reader of general literature, she knew her Bible from cover to cover, and was much in the habit of expressing herself in Scriptural language.  Her husband had been the Rector of a lonely parish in Donegal, where for twenty-five years he had taught an unsophisticated people, “letting his light shine,” as his wife expressed it.

One recreation he had:  the writing of a Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.  While he was shut up in his study, little Henry, a mischievous, wild urchin, had to be kept quiet.  Here was field for the full exercise of Mrs. Archer’s ingenuity.  As the boy’s life went on, she gained an able assistant in this loving labour, namely Malcolm McGregor, Henry’s school-friend.  Malcolm and Henry were sent to Foyle College at the same time.  Mrs. Archer could hardly read for joy the day she expected her darling home for his first vacation, accompanied by “the jolliest chap in the school,” whom he had begged leave to bring with him.

From the Rectory door the parents could watch the outside car coming down the steep hill; King William, the Rector’s old horse, slipping a little, and two shabby, hair-covered trunks falling on his back, to be recovered by Jack Dunn, the man-of-all-work, who could drive on occasion.