departed did not fail to acknowledge by sundry antics and gambols on the green sward of the cemetery. It was an encounter with this troublesome neighbour that the guardia was now treating his village friends with.

"He seemed to melt away in thin mist, as I gazed," he continued, "and he became white all over, whiter than the sheet in the rector's yard hard by, and it grew taller and taller as he withdrew, and I saw the moonbeams pass through the hollow sockets of his eyes."

Here the ghost-seer's narrative was interrupted by a merry ringing laugh.

Mercy on us!" ejaculated a young contadina, a tidy-looking lass with a smart cap and smooth apron, "and it was the rector's gray mare

after all, I dare say."

This sceptic explanation of the terrific vision was received with no favourable murmur.

"Mortal "The Campo

"The rector's old mare has been dead these three months!" mare's eyes give no passage to the rays of the moon!" Santo is haunted-notorious fact-has been so from time immemorial!" "The monk with two heads!" "The lady with gory locks!" Micco, the fowler !" "No man's bones, it is proved, find rest in a bloody grave!"

"Old

Old Micco's ghost was one of the religions of the place; it was a phantom of recent date. The good rustics would put up with no joke on the subject. The two-headed monk himself was hardly a safer theme for merriment, and the profane damsel could hear some half-muttered observations about "town-bred impudence," and "forward minxes wiser than their elders," with which some of the venerable cronies of the community visited her anti-demonological presumption.

The town-bred girl shook her head with impatience. She was a nutbrown beauty, with bushy ringlets, and eyes "as large as a sixpence." She had been brought up at Parma, as an humble attendant on the farmer's widow, and had won the good will of that lady's "strapping boy fresh from college," who had imparted to her not a little of his scholastic lore. She was now at home for the holidays. She had been "smoothed and varnished," the villagers remarked, petted and flattered in town. She could read and write, gave herself airs, and did not scruple to laugh their old fashioned notions to scorn.

She had her abettor and partisans, nevertheless; none so ardent as the casaro himself, a widower aged fifty, who was very sweet upon her during his periodical visit in town, and at whose expense the truant girl had many a hearty laugh, when tête-à-tête in her studies with her mistress's "strapping boy fresh from college."

The poor casaro had lost his sleep. That saucy cut of her cap, her ribbons and flounces, bewildered-the scent on her bushy ringlets inebriated him. Every month, on the recurrence of his visits, Marcella's piquant large eyes, sent a fresh arrow through the good widower's fustian waistcoat, so that had men been able to see under that particular part of his garment, his heart would have been discovered bored through and through, and in as sad a plight as that of "The Virgin of the seven Sorrows," with her seven villanous knives stuck up in her boddice.

"You are a big man, watchman," the girl argued, "and a tough one. If it was old Micco's ghost that you met, wherefore did you not walk up to him with a hearty halloo? Was it not your old crony? And were you afraid he would bite you?"

The guardia campestre drew himself up to his full grenadier height, and looked down upon her with an air of conscious dignity.

"You mind your flounces and furbelows, you pretty gay doll, will you? Wait until your ill luck brings you face to face with a soul (the Italian for ghost), and I promise you, your tongue, sharp and nimble as it is, will stick to your throat till you can't say boh! to a goose. Hoity, toity!" he continued, in a tone of contemptuous indignation, "what shall we have next? Shall there be no more souls in the world? Are we men, or are we heathens ?"

"A heathen, I must be for one," retorted the town-spoiled beauty, "since assuredly I am no man. But if it be manly to take a midnight walk to the churchyard, and speak out one's mind to the scarecrow that frightened a big fellow like you out of his poor wits, by Heaven! I am the one to do it."

"The Lord bless us!" resounded on every side. "The girl is mad!” "Less mad than wicked !" and the whole parish group crossed themselves as fast as if the ghost itself had suddenly stood up amongst them.

"Hark'ee, my pretty wench!" again interposed the veteran. "Hark'ee -I am an old soldier, and have seen fire, and have been all but hacked to pieces by those incarnate fiends, the Cossacks. I am an old stager myself, and think little of a night stroll by moonlight, in discharge of my duty. I keep to the main road, nevertheless, and as for grave-yards," he said, lowering his tone, and his face grew dark as he was speaking, "as for grave-yards, I make it a point to keep as wide aloof from them as old Nick from the christened belis on the church steeple. Only you see last night I came out of the 'Bettolino,' at Colorno-and

"Now is the cat out of the bag," said Marcella, with her loud laugh, "and the flasks at the 'Bettolino' had been too many for you, and you saw double as you made your way home."

"Well, well, my valiant lass," said the watchman, with an eloquent shrug of the shoulders, "that is as it may be. But yonder is the door, and yonder across the threshing floor, lies your way. We are on the stroke of midnight, and old Micco is beginning to rub his eyes, and take a turn in his bed. You make the trial, that's all, and if you do not hurry back much faster than you set out, ere you are a hundred rods on your way, I am content never to see the inside of the 'Bettolino,' never to skim off the oil from a wine flask again."

"Done!" shouted the maid. "Martin, mark my words; I'll make you a sober man for all the rest of your life."

"You'll set out, I dare say," retorted the old soldier, testily. "You'll go as far as the hay-stack, and there crouch down for half an-hour, and then come back and have it all your own way."

66

"Ha! say you so?" said the girl. Well, then, here is my spindle: whoever will go to the grave-yard to-morrow, at daybreak, will find it stuck up on the sods over old Micco's grave.'

There was an awful pause. The rustics looked at each other in sore dismay. The old watchman put on a grin of incredulity and defiance. The enamoured dairyman was the first to recover from his stupor. "I'll be there at daybreak, and look for it," quoth he. "I will pluck the girl's spindle from the old fowler's grave; I'll bring it back from the churchyard; and by all the ghosts that roam by night! the brave wench that can do such a feat, shall not go unrewarded; I will go before the priest, and claim the fair owner of the spindle for my own.

"A bargain! a match!" cried the youngsters of the company, with one voice, delighted, in the midst of their alarms, with the romantic turn matters were taking. "Marcella and Domenico !-a match!-look out

for sugar-plums!"*

Marcella blushed till the colour on her cheeks outshone the flaming ribbons of her cap; for as much of her heart as she ever was aware of, was far away in town, and the "strapping widow's son, fresh from college," had it in his keeping. He had vowed he would make a lady of her, some time or other, and the ambitious peasant-girl laughed at the pretensions of the mature casaro.

Marcella was motherless. Her father, also a house-servant, was away with her mistress in town; the parson deep in his slumbers; no one present had a right to exercise any control over her. The casaro, the most important authority now present, had been won over to her cause. She rid herself of the importunate remonstrances of some of the elderly dames. She had offered to go, and go she must.

She laid down her distaff, and stuck her spindle into her girdle. She drew up her Polonaise hood over her head, smoothed down her apron, and shook the ringlets off her brow.

As she stood up, the old church-clock tolled heavily the hour. It was twelve o'clock-ghost-time all over the world.

Marcella stood up, as if that bell had tolled a signal; she stalked up to the door; turned round, with a wicked smile, to take her farewell of the rustics, who looked at her with very long faces. She passed the threshold, and her footsteps were soon lost in the distance.

Outside, the night was bright and somewhat frosty. The moon had not yet risen. All the stars twinkled in the firmament, but there was that slight wintry haziness, which, without obscuring them, seemed to remove their light and influence millions of miles away from the earth. Not a breath of wind was astir; or rather, none fanned the nut-brown cheek of the girl, as she hurried breathlessly on, but the loftiest summit of the bare poplar-trees were seen to quiver uneasily, and there was that faint moan in the air, which betokens a commotion in the elements, far away in the upper regions. The ground was white with hoar-frost; and a few crisp, dry leaves cracked underneath her feet.

More than once, as the brambles from the hedges caught hold of her trailing garment, did the startled girl impatiently anathematise her town-made petticoats, and wish herself clad in the less cumbrous jupon of her simpler village friends.

She walked on with admirable steadiness, nevertheless. She looked intently before her, without suffering any of the innumerable, indefinable, ineffable voices of the night to divert her attention. A smile was on her lips; but it was a dim, dismal smile; an exaggeration of self-command and composure; a putting on a bold face upon what was, unquestionably, a very hazardous game.

For, be it remembered, poor Marcella's scepticism was of a very recent date. It was the result of petulant assurance rather than well-wrought conviction; the confidence of pride, not of considerate valour. All along that walk her spirit was in a flutter of conflicting emotions.

"The dead never return," was the easy doctrine of her young collegian in town; and we may say, the agreeable manners of the instructor made up for the want of soundness in his arguments. But, "The dead Confetti, or sugar-plums, are used instead of bride-cake, all over Italy.

live a life everlasting," had been, from her childhood upwards, thundered from the pulpit. "Souls are immortal, and God omnipotent. In His hands are the portals of the grave. And may they not yawn and give up their prey, whenever it suits His eternal designs? And may it not be His pleasure, now, to depart from the course of Nature's laws, to confound a rash girl's stubborn unbelief, and chastise her presumption?"

With these harrowing thoughts to keep her company, Marcella made the best of her way to the churchyard.

The church of Gainago was not more than three quarters of a mile away from the farm-house. There was a short cut across the homefields. This led to some extensive ruins, mantled over by a thin shrubbery, and still thinner plantation of poplar-trees. This meagre strip of woodland alone obstructed the view of the church. Hard by the house of worship stood the solitary parsonage; and between the two edifices lay the Campo Santo, or Sagrato, the consecrated ground where,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet slept.

The industry of the good pastors had long since encroached upon the last resting-place of the departed, and a good slice of the churchyard had been converted into a kitchen-garden, fenced by a stone wall. Faithful to the horror the Italians everywhere evince for the relics of mortality, the rectors of Gainago had further entrenched themselves behind several rows of cypress and yew trees, which effectually screened their windows from the melancholy view beneath, and increased thus the gloom and desolation of the "city of the dead." The church itself was a crazy old fabric. It dated from the time when the Benedictines constituted an industrious community, and took the management of their lands upon themselves. In those remote ages one of their minor cenobiums was established here; and the wide-strewn ruins on one side of the churchyard had once been their cells and cloisters. Some of their monumental stones, much damaged by time, were still discernible; and contrasted rather strangely with the rudelycarved crosses, red, white, and black, with which the poorer rustics attempted to secure the memory of their dead against oblivion.

Altogether the place was as weird and lonely as heart might desire ; and almost close to the steeple, behind the church, in a corner by itself, was the dreaded red cross, under which the remains of the ill-fated Micco, the poacher, had been devoutly deposited.

Marcella had left the home-fields behind her, she had threaded her way across the brushwood with which the ruins of the cloisters were overgrown. A broad ditch separated them from the churchyard, and a narrow plank was thrown athwart.

A cold shiver ran through her veins as that frail bridge swung and quivered beneath her weight. For one instant she reeled right and left; but, by a brave effort, she recovered her balance and sprang in safety

ashore.

Here was the battle-field. She cast one look around. The ground was clear before her. The undulating turf, heaving with its ominous mounds, bristling with its hundred crosses, so carefully shut out on all sides from human view!

Marcella paused: she was alone with the dead. The delay was involuntary. Her heart urged her onwards, but the limbs refused their office.

She fell on her knees. She muttered a requiem, one of those Latin

prayers which to the ignorant Catholic convey no meaning, but to which, from the very circumstance, he attaches all the importance of a magic spell. She rose with renewed energies. She pressed her hand on her heart and bade it be still. She then took the shortest walk across the "God's acre," and reached the threshold of the church. She had to walk round it, her business being in the solitary corner behind the steeple. She glanced, as if stealthily, over her shoulder. That she could not help. The vagueness of her danger was more demoralising than the actual presence of the most terrific object. She felt a vague suspicion, as if the inhabitants of the nether world would not be satisfied with the advantage their intangibility gives them over mere flesh and blood, but must needs have recourse to the ungenerous stratagem of an assault from behind.

There was something like uneasy trepidation as she walked round the church-a breathless suspense till she reached the lonely recess.

She came in sight at last. The ground was clear. With a convulsive grasp she drew forth her spindle.

In that very emergency a loud, rattling, whizzing noise resounded throughout the church within. The crazy steeple trembled as if in labour. Marcella gasped for breath. It was only the clock about to strike the half-hour!

Marcella smiled bitterly.

thing hysterically wild.

Her recovery from that panic had some

It was a smile of exultation and defiance. Her brave heart had won her the victory!

She stood before the solitary grave. The soil was bare around it. No rain of heaven had power to smooth, no blade of grass was suffered to mantle the turf that weighed on the malefactor's remains!

Marcella walked up to that forsaken mound, and laid her hand on the cross. Anxious as she had hitherto been she could not help tarrying awhile as if to enjoy her triumph. She turned all round, and took a deliberate survey of the place. The back of the church and steeple, and a high fencing wall enclosed it on all sides.

"The

"The monk with two heads!" she exclaimed, with a sneer. white lady with blood-streaming locks! ha! ha! ha! Young Valentino, in town, was right, after all, and the dead never return!"

With this she stooped hastily down she drove the spindle deep into the ground, right at the foot of the red cross.

As she was rising to depart her dress was caught hold of and dragged forcibly down.

She uttered a piercing shriek and sunk down insensible.

Her cry was heard miles off. The casaro heard it from the casement of his bed-room, where he was making ready for his night's rest, and he crossed himself with pious horror. He did not sleep at all that night, but all his love and boding apprehension could not inspire him with courage to go forth to the rescue.

On the morrow, at daybreak only, he summoned some of the stoutest rustics to his side. Spirits, it is a matter of faith at Gainago, have no power against numbers, no power by daylight.

In a body they hastened to the burial-ground. They found Marcella deep in her swoon, stiffened with cold, lying in a heap on the spot desecrated by her foolhardiness.

She had run her spindle through the skirt of her dress, and pinned it down to the ground.