should let her mind be occupied with such trivial matters."

"Papa, I suppose it is because I am a woman," laughed Elsie.

Varcor ruffled his feathers, smoothed them again, and then hopped up pertly.

66 Elsie," ," said Mr. Bruce, gravely, "I should suppose that you would realize-” "The devil" interrupted an irreverent voice.

"Whence came that note of sin?" exclaimed Mr. Bruce, looking around in bewilderment.

"Hellflugins," repeated the voice.
Mr. Bruce leaped to his feet.
"Am I bewitched ?" he questioned.
The answer was:

"I'm Captain Jinks of the hoss marines; I'm a captain in the army."

Then it all became apparent. The voice was from Varcor's cage. His long period of silence was over. The talented bird had changed tutors, to some purpose, you see. "I'm a daring young man with a flying trapeze; I can fly throngh the air with the greatest of ease," proceeding with his choice extracts.

Mr. Bruce walked around the cage. He eyed it in sheer dismay. Varcor hopped towards him.

"Old skinflint, old skinflint, old skinflint," he snapped out.

"That bird must die," roared Mr. Bruce. He seized the cage, and opened it, while Elsie fled from the apartment in tears.

But Mr. Bruce had reckoned without his host. Varcor had relapsed into total de

pravity. As he reached his arm in the cage Varcon seized his finger, and held on till it was withdrawn.

Mr. Bruce danced around the room snapping his fingers together. His spectacles were dashed to the floor and broken. He ran against a table covered with books and vases, and it overturned with a crash. Meantime Varcor released his hold, and flew out at the hall door. He fired a parting shot as he went.

"T-h-e d-e-v-i-l!"

Mr. Bruce sprang after him, but he flitted along the hall and into the parlor. A window was open there, and he made his escape forever. Elsie was there.

"Where has that bird been ?" foamed Mr. Bruce.

Mr. Weldon has had him for a few days," Elsie faltered.

"Who?"

"Mr. Weldon."

"Mr. Weldon! Ha! and he wants to marry you. Evidently he is a very bad man himself and must keep very bad company. He shall never have you. You shall marry Mr. Montague to-morrow, if you want to. Weldon's a scoundrel." And Mr. Bruce rushed away to cool his wrath.

Well, Elsie did not marry Mr. Montague so soon as Mr. Bruce had indicated. But she did finally become his wife.

Varcor was never seen in that vicinity afterwards. If he has received the reward he should have for his aptness in taking lessons from Mr. Weldon, he is travelling with a circus and acquiring fame.

BEFORE I begin my tale, let me inform iny good readers that the ghost in question is not the visible spiritual part of the respected and respectable relative whose name forms the larger part of the title of this article. It was hers only by right of discovery, not by unity of essence.

The prologue aver, now to the story. It was Christmas eve, and we were all gathered around the blazing fire in the sittingroom. By all, I mean my father and mother, big sister, and brother Harry, who had just come home for his Christmas holidays, and Aunt Sarepta. As Aunt Sarepta is to be the centre figure of this picture, I think she is entitled to a more particular introduction than the rest, and I will endeavor to place her before you as faithfully as I She was a spinster, of such uncertain, or rather impossible age, that no one, not even my father, who was her own brother, could give an opinion on it. My curiosity had prompted me more than once to question him on the subject, and his reply invariably was:

can.

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Sarepta's age! really, my child, I can't say. She was grown up long before months and years had any meaning for me, andlet me see-1 don't think I ever heard of her having a birthday. Bless me, child! I don't know how old she is."

So I would leave him, and try to satisfy the keen appetite of my curiosity by the help of mathematics, making my statement thus: Let X = papa's age, and X+a grown girl Aunt Sarepta's. I have racked my poor brain over this problem remorselessly, but in vain; I never could bring those mystic characters from the vale of the unknown to the clear not-to-be-disputed fact of 1, 2, 3, 4. Her age was as hopelessly lost as the record of dark ages; but her face and form were patent to all; and let me try to do justice to them.

First, we'll take her face-no, we wont, we'll take her cap. That cap of caps which towered as scornfully above all modern millinery as the eagle does above the-the -duck. It was made of lace; for home wear, black, for company and Sunday,

white. The crown was large, and stood out boldly from her head, displaying beneath it a little knot of carrot-colored hair about the size of a walnut, which was firmly skewered to the back of her head. The cap had a cape, which went around it, met under the chin and hung down almost to her shoulders. It was also of lace, very thin in the main, and letting her neck shine through; but the bottom was trimmed with a broad ruche of scarlet ribbon, which gave her the appearance of a turkey gobbler with his gills flapping. The front was the master-piece, being surrounded by a ruche like the cape, the part at the cheek increasing in size till it looked like two cabbage roses. This was her cap, and next comes her face. Her hair, I have said, was carroty and not very plentiful. Her skin, possibly from a love of harmony, had tried to assume the same hue, and with fair success. Her eyes were gray, neither large nor lustrous, rather sharp, than otherwise. Her nose was remarkable for its faithful adherence to the old Roman type; and her chin was sharp enough to split rocks, as effectually as the beak of that wonderful bird of old was said to do. Her mouth was large, lips thin, and when they opened displayed a row of teeth whose ghastly whiteness reminded one of the tusks of the dragon. This was my aunt's face; and now to her figure. It wont take long, for there was not much of it to speak of, for though it was exceedingly tall and scraggy, it was so lean that the joints of her spine showed painfully through her dress in the summer time, for which reason she always sat upright in her chair, saving thereby bones, dry goods and the upholstery.

This was our aunt as she sat that night, grim as the figure of Fate, a little outside our circle. I said that Harry had just returned from school. Of course he was the lion of the group, which dignity he bore bravely, entertaining us with accounts of school pranks and frolics, of which he was always the hero. We young ones listened with open-mouthed devotion, applauding with such exclamations as Good, Harry!

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"That is just what they all ask," said he, and no one yet has been able to solve the problem. It is a little short stumpy fellow, all white. He goes prowling through the hall as the clock strikes twelve. No one knows where he comes from or where he goes to. They have spoken to it, but it wont answer. One man tried to catch it, but it slipped through his fingers, leaving a blue sulphurous smoke curling around them."

"My good gracious!" we exclaimed, and drew closer together.

Aunt Sarepta looked at Harry severely, and then opening her mouth, so that her white teeth glittered with a ghastliness that made me shiver still more, she said sternly:

"Harry, are you not ashamed to terrify your sisters with such sinful levity ?" "Sinful levity, aunty! I assure you, it is true."

Aunt Sarepta's teeth retreated behind the barrier of her thin pale lips, which arranged themselves in a smile of contemptuous incredulity; and Harry answered with spirit:

"You may laugh as much as you please, aunt, now; but if the ghost should once favor you with a call, I'm afraid you would not think it quite so amusing. Your cry would be, "O give me the legs of my youth!"

I am sorry to say that neither Harry's tone nor words were as respectful as the age and dignity of his relative demanded; but the glow and dazzle of "just come home" hung fresh upon him, and besides, the fact of any one having the hardihood to speak in such terms to Aunt Sarepta, so stunned all of us, that, had we felt the inclination, we had not the power to reprove him. But Aunt Sarepta came bravely to her own defence.

"And what do you suppose will be your cry, sir, when you are called to give ac

count for your shortcomings, to separate your tares from the wheat, eh ?-what do you think of that?"

Papa gave Harry a warning look, but the spirit of mischief and opposition was up in him, and he replied:

"I'd stand it as well, aunty, as you would, if you should meet the ghost. Come, tell us what you think you would do."

"I never think on impossibilities. A ghost is one."

"But the witch of Endor?".

"She called up the dead by the help of the Evil One; and should he, by the blackness and depravity of my poor sinful nature, ever gain such dominion over me as to send one of his emissaries into my presence, I would advance boldly to it, seize it with one hand, and, while I held my Bible in the other, bid it, by the Power that cast its master from paradise, to quit my sight."

During this discourse my aunt had gesticulated freely, going through the acting part of her imaginary triumph with a zest that would have done credit to a Ristori. At the close her arm remained outstretched, and her skinny forefinger pointed at Harry, as though he were, not the presumptuous spirit, but the prince of darkness himself. But, all undaunted, he replied:

"Good, good, aunt! that's the way to fetch them. What do you say to going back with me, and having a tussle with this old codger ?-provide yourself with a pair of fire-proof gloves, you know, before you begin. Are you sure, now, that when you came to the scratch, you wouldn't flunk just a little ?"

But aunt deigned this irreverent remark no reply; she dropped her arm, and turning to my father, said:

James, pray, pray in bitterness of spirit for that boy. I see perdition written on his brow. I shall wrestle in spirit for him in my devotions to-night." And with these words, she arose, lighted her candle, and left the room.

Aunt Sarepta's room was a large chamber at the opposite end of the house from that occupied by the other members of the family. It was furnished in a style peculiar to, and very much like herself; one of its features being a heavily curtained bed, to which, in a measure, she was indebted for the match between her hair and skin,

and to which she clung like a knight to his spurs, in spite of the suggestions of her friends, and the orders of her physician. She also had a stove in it, which in winter she kept at a red heat. In my days of wickedness I used to say it was to keep constantly before her a comforting picture of the state of the lost; and also to have herself a little bit in training, if in the end she should discover that she was elected on the wrong side.

I said the room was large. The bed stood at one end, and the stove at the other. Aunt Sarepta went to the stove end, put her candle on a little stand which held her Bible and hymn book, and began to disrobe. First, she took off her cap, and produced a remarkable result of starch and ruffles, called her nightcap. How she ever managed to sleep in that cap is a problem sealed up with her age; the crown must have extended fully six inches beyond her head, and the washerwoman declares she has never once found the starch in it broken. Perhaps she lay on her side, some one will say. No, she could not have done that, for the fluted ruffle set around her face like a row of spikes, that would have worn her meagre cheeks bare in one night's rest, or rather unrest. No, it is useless to investigate. The thing is a mystery, a hopeless, helpless mystery, and I give it up. Aunt Sarepta proceeded to put on this cap; but just as she held the string beneath her chin, she sneezed. Now a sneeze to Aunt Sarepta was a serious thing, for in its "hollow sound" she heard "cold, influenza, rheumatic pains, mustard drafts and cold weak tea," brought up by a frowsy servant. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." So thought Aunt Sarepta. She laid the cap aside with a sigh, and took from a bureau drawer a large square piece of red flannel, which she wrapped and rolled around her head several times, and finally tied under her chin. This done to her satisfaction, she said to herself:

next took a patchwork quilt, in which a green eagle was represented surrounded by huge red hearts and livers, in tantalizing proximity to his beak, from the press. She put this over the chair, and then drew it close to the fire, seated herself, rolled the quilt tightly around her, plunged her feet into the water, and began to steam.

O that some poor but talented artist, unseen, could have sketched my aunt as she sat there! The flannel bound tightly around her brow, her nose standing out grandly, and the sharp angles of her knees threatening to come through the quilt and separate the eagle's head from his body. She sat a few minutes gazing into the fire, ever and anon nodding her head as if in approval of her thoughts, till at length she put out her hand, and, taking her hymn book from the stand, she began to read.

Now when Aunt Sarepta read her hymn book, she was always powerfully exercised; and when powerfully exercised, she always gave audible vent to her feelings. Consequently, she read her hymns in a monotonous half-crying voice, dwelling louder.or longer on those words that particularly comforted or distressed her. This night, "When I can read my title clear" seemed the balm most blessed to her need. She read it over several times, and was dwelling with unusual energy on the line "Then I can smile at Satan's rage," when a sound behind her caused her to look around, and by the faint light of the flickering dip she beheld a sight that froze the blood in her veins and the words on her lips. The curtains of her bed were parted, and in the opening stood a frightful thing, all snowwhite except the eyes, which, like two glowing coals, were fixed upon her. Aunt Sarepta stiffened and grew cold, froze fast to her chair; she could not move, speak, or even turn her head away from that frightful gaze, which seemed piercing her through and through.

"Where! where was Roderick," or rather Roderick's courage, then? Her Bible lay close beside her on the stand, but no hand was outstretched to seize it. It was powerless even to hold the hymn book, which dropped from her fingers into the foottub with a loud splash. The noise seemed to arouse the horrid thing. It moved its head from side to side, and then, O horror of horrors! it slid to the floor, and walked with slow and solemn step

straight to Sarepta. Nearer and nearer it came, its eyes glowing, its mouth open, showing its ghastly teeth and fiery tongue. A few steps from her he paused, looked at her with a fiendish grin, and then slowly swung into view a long tail. O heaven above! it was the Evil One come to seize her for her sinful boasting. The fumes of brimstone already filled her nostrils. With one wild yell she sprang from her seat, upsetting both the foottub and the kettle of boiling water which sat beside her, and whose contents fell over her naked feet. The pain brought forth another yell, but at that moment the thing again approached, uttering low growls, and she plunged forward, to trip over the dragging quilt, and fall headlong on the floor, while the demon, with a cry of triumph, sprang on her prostrate body, and lapped her face with his tongue. Shriek after shriek burst from Sarepta as she struggled with her enemy, who now uttered sharp cries and lashed her with his tail.

peared. "What is the matter?" all cried in one voice; but no answer came. My aunt had committed the only weakness ever known of her; she had fainted. As the door opened, the thing had left her and stood in the shade; but the moment it saw Harry it ran to him and sprang upon him.

"Why, halloo, Foxy!" he cried. "How did you come here ?" And then he burst out laughing. My mother, who had been leaning over my aunt, looked up severely.

"I can't help it, mother, indeed I can't; but Aunt Sarepta has seen a ghost. It is too good! I brought that dog as a present to father. I did not want to show it until to-morrow, and it seems he has got in here, and played ghost for Aunt Sarepta. O, it is too good! The Douglass vanquished in his hall! Up, Fox!" And Fox rose on his hindlegs and walked gravely to the side of his victim. The effect was irresistible, and, in spite of the senseless form on the floor, the room rang with laughter. Aunt Sarepta revived under the proper treatment, but her scalds were very severe, and kept her a prisoner a long time. On her recovery two changes were noticeable in her tastes: the banishment of her bed-curtains, and a reticence on the subject of ghosts.