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THE GHOST-HUNTER AND HIS FAMILY.*

ALL became still within and without the house; but Morris did not sleep. The candle, which he had neglected to extinguish, was nearly expiring, occasionally sending up glares of light, and then sinking into dimness. At length, gradually, and to himself imperceptibly, his eyes began to close; slumber was just stealing over his faculties. Sundenly he bounced up in his bed and stared around him, asking, "Who calls me by my name?"

The candle gave its last strong flicker upward; and, in the (to his eyes) lurid supernatural light which it threw over the apartment, he did indeed see a pallid face looking at him through the little window at the foot of the bed. He winked his eyes, and then glared them wide open. ""Tis there still," he cried, jumping out on the floor. The candle finally sunk in the socket, leavFrom the Library of Romance. VOL. X.

ing him in darkness. He groped to the window, flung it open, but saw nothing without, save the white gleamings of the moon, here and there contrasted with some shadows, wherever an object interrupted the sickly light. "I'll be afther you," he uttered, groping about for his clothes. He was halfdressed when he heard his brother's voice asking him what he was doing. His father's repeated commands rushed to his recollection, and he was shortly in bed again. Now, however, he did not relapse into sleep. The morning dawn found him watching the window; but there was no return of the real or fancied vision.

We all know that the desire of attaining an object is, proverbially, strong in proportion to the difficulties in our way. Morris's thirst for hunting down Joe Wilson's ghost increased from hour to hour. For many nights he slept but little, still on the watch; his pulses throbbed at the least sound; but night after night passed away, and he received no second visit.

His desire heated to passion, of

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which the effects were visible in the almost trembling abruptness of his manner and utterance, and in the redness of his wild, yet fine eyes, he began to level the obstacles which lay between him and the gratification of his yearnings. Exclusively of the peculiar relish he had for the feat he burned to undertake, an encounter with the poor troubled spirit was, he argued, a good action in itself, and this he showed in the following clear man

ner.

It was partly the universally received creed appertaining to ghostly appearances, that their wanderings among us arise from something connected with their previous sojourn on earth--for their leaving undone, for instance, some action, upon the due performance of which depended their repose and happiness in eternity; and that they haunt their former dwellingplaces in the flesh, until some daring mortal questions them, obtains from their lips instructions what to do-because no ghost can perform his own work on earth without human agency -and then faithfully goes through what is necessary to secure their rest in another world, and their final departure from this.

We will not follow the wayward Morris in his arguments against his sense of duty.

The tenth night after the opening of our story, his brain whirling with uncontrolable desire, and fiercely banishing, in a fit of frenzied resolve, the better promptings of his nature, he hurried on his clothes, without, as he thought, awaking his brother; cautiously unlocked and unbarred the door of the house, and bounded over the threshold. He would not pause-onward he hastened.

The nearest path to the place he sought lay through the neighbouring church-yard, to gain which he had to cross a garden slightly enclosed, and an open field. As he approached the stile leading into the burial-ground, a large dun-coloured dog, which seemed to have been couched upon its steps, started up, and its red eyes glared into his. For an instant he paused terror-stricken: he had heard of evil spirits assuming, among other strange ones, such an appearance. But he soon sprang forward. The dog jumped into the church-yard, Morris vaulted over the stile, and stood sternly in the path, looking around him; but around him were only the tomb-stones, and the

head-stones, and the little grassy mounds which covered the deadthings to which he was by this time quite accustomed. The dog had vanished.

He paused awhile in the shade of his old friends the yew-trees, which were motionless, and black in the night, like gigantic plumes above a huge hearse. Holding his head daringly high, he sent a scrutinising glance into every familiar nook and corner of the dreary place, but not a living or a moving thing was visible.

This, after the disappearance of the dog, must be considered as only a passing repetition of many former challenges to the ghosts of the whole mass of mouldering or mouldered mortality in the church-yard. Being on the spot, it was but right to give them, all and each, a renewed chance of availing themselves of his service. He soon held on, in his pursuit of the individual ghost which had lured him forth on the present occasion.

Bounding over the graves, and, now and then, boyishly vaulting over the head-stones, he stood on the stile that gave entrance to the burial-ground at the side opposite to that by which he had approached it. The next instant he was in Joe Wilson's bosheen.

This little green lane, lately become so celebrated, led, with many a curve, from one extremity of the suburbs to another. It was altogether lonely. Its breadth might be about four paces.Here and there it was overshadowed by trees; and bounded, at either hand, by hedges of sufficient growth to cast a gloom over it, even in day light.

When Morris Brady jumped into this deep and solitary lane, he found that he was at some distance from the middle, where Joe Wilson's murdered body had been found. The moon was on the wane; but, as the night had more than gained its noon, she stood high in the heavens. The sky was frosty-clear, and the cold light struck fully down upon the narrow way, shining brightly on the centre, and distinctly showing the broad stone and its indents; while at either side, under the shadow of the overhanging hedges, although they were now nearly leafless, nothing could be perfectly distinguished.

A piece of wall, inserted into the mass of earth on which the hedges grew, to prop it up in that particular place, marked the spot where murder had lately been done; and on a broad

stone in the wall was, as we already know, a terrible memorial of the event. Nor had old Hesther Bonnetty exaggerated when she vowed that the middle of the road, opposite to the wall, was yet uncleansed of blood. The dull redstains were even now distinctly visible in the line of brilliant moonshine, which, as we have said, ran along the centre of the bosheen.

As Morris Brady approached the well-known place, he did not fail to recognise the fatal tokens; and, notwithstanding the continued boldness of his advance, and all his previous audacity, he felt dread and awe stealing over his heart at the sight. Scarcely slackening his pace, however, he stood on the very spot-on the marks themselves. He did not, at once, turn his regards towards the wall. Yet a kind of stir, without the accompaniment of noise, caught his side vision. He jumped fully round, and confronted the appearance; and there, bending over the remarkable stone, and too visible to leave a doubt of its presence-although, owing to the deep shade of the hedge above, somewhat indistinctly shaped forth-stood a human figure.

Morris's skin crept, in spite of him, as if in horror at the cold current now running beneath it. He took off his hat, crossed his forehead, and repeated aloud the names of the Trinity. The figure slowly raised its drooping head, and Morris saw the features of Joe Wilson-pallid, indeed, and strangely changed-yet still the man's well-known features; and again did the ghost-seer wince under the cold, unwinking, passionless, mindless, lifeless stare that was fixed upon him.

Suddenly his courage returned, or rather a daring determination re-nerved him, and, in a wild and startling tone, he exclaimed

"In the most Holy Name, this night, I, Morris Brady, command you to tell me who and what you are ?"

There was a moment's dead pause, in which Morris heard the hollow beating of his own heart. A deep, but low voice replied to him, "The spirit of the man murthered on the spot where you stand."

"In the same name, once more, tell me what it is that puts throuble on you?" and now Morris's own voice sunk low.

"None dared to ask before; and the dead must be silent till they are questioned."

“I know it—can I give rest to you?"

"You can if you have the heart to do it."

"I have the heart," answered Morris, his impetuosity returning; “and what's not sinful I'll do, if living Christian has the power."

"Listen, then?" and Morris conceived that the figure rose to more than mortal height: "Listen-to-morrow night, as the clock sounds twelve, meet me in John's Abbey Church-yard, at the head of my own grave; on that spot meet me, or Morris Brady, rue your challenge!"

As the last strangely-cadenced words died away, the figure, which had previously began to move, was no longer visible.

For a moment Morris stirred not. A great confusion of mind, though not unmixed with fear, chained him to the spot. Suddenly he recovered himself, and bounded after the apparition, which had disappeared round a turning of the bosheen, a few paces from the wall. Clear of the turning, Morris's eye could follow a considerable portion of the length of the lane; but he saw no object in motion.

He became faint, and leaned against the fence of the bosheen for support, and it was some time before he could assume sufficient bodily strength to return home. He succeeded at length, however, in gaining his bed without discovery; but sleep was further than ever from his eyes. To-morrow night, in John's Abbey church-yard," rang in his ears.

He seemed to hear the words repeated in the silence of his hushed soul.

Although, during the day, his conscience did not fail to upbraid him with his disobedience to his father; although he feared to encounter his father's look, and fancied that the old man's mild eye was glancing severe reproach at him; still Morris would not recede from the self-sought adventure. A gloomy-spell, a fate, seemed to his mind to bind him to go on. Nor did he forget the last words-On that spot meet me, or Morris Brady, rue your challenge!"

The weather had changed during the day. It was a gloomy November night: the rain fell over the blackened sky; the wind came in gusts, heralding its approach hy hollow moanings, which grew louder and louder as it advanced, until at last it swept, hissing, and whistling, and roaring through the mouldering, but beautiful arches of the

ruin, beside which our adventurer paused.

The seared leaves of the alders, and the other chance-sown trees that increased the gloom of the unroofed space within, rustled against each other as the gusts swept by; then their branches waved and rattled, casting the leaves in crispy showers to the ground; and then those which remained trembled as the blustering visitation passed away. The rushing river was not far off, and the noise of its waters filled up the pauses of the blast.

The moon, which had shone out so vividly the preceding night, as if to assist in turning Morris to his doom, now refused him a beam to cheer the darkness around him, and, morally speaking, within him; for it was not surprising that a night like this, approaching its dead noon, should in such a place, have a sympathetic effect on his distempered imagination. He stood awaiting the striking of the hour of midnight, his head drawn back, his dark brows knitted together, his eyes flashing through the gloom in the interior of the old building, and his ear catching every sound, in anticipation of the appearance of the being he had come to meet.

At length the sonorous town-clock slowly began to toll twelve. Each vibration met an answering throb in Morris's bosom. He counted the last stroke as it swung along the returning gust, and, in an instant after, started back, raising his hands before him in an attitude of intense and solemn wonder. It could not be the echoes of the ruin which returned that last clang so distinctly. No: it was a bell fixed in a mouldering steeple of the Abbey, which never tolled, save to welcome the dead to their homes within its precincts. Morris felt that the sound was produced by no mortal hand.

It had scarce died away, half suffocated by the wind, when he heard his name uttered within, in the same deep toneswhich had replied to his questions in the bosheen, on the previous night.

"I am here," he answered, in a voice scarcely less thrilling than that to which he responded.

"Enter the abbey," continued the unseen one. Morris, collecting his firmness, bent his body to pass through a low, arched door-way, half choked up with rubbish and weeds. Standing to his full height in the interior of the building, he scowled around him, and jerked his head from side to side, as

was his fashion when much excited.In those parts of the ruinous space around, which were not sunk in utter blackness, he could perceive nothing of the apparition of Joe Wilson.

"Your bidding is done," resumed Morris, after a pause; "I am standing in the middle of the place."

"Stand at the head of the prior's tomb," still commanded his invisible companion.

Morris endeavoured to ascertain the spot whence the voice came, but the careering gust seemed to bear it round and round the building. He knew the prior's tomb well. In his early boyhood it had been one of the rallying points of his sports. Often had he and his companions contended for its possession, carrying on a small warfare as if for a fortress; and often did their youthful shout ring above the ashes of the forgotten dignitary. Nay, often had the identical Joe Wilson, whose ghost now summoned Morris to a conference at the prior's tomb, been one of the thoughtless rioters; and he was always the last who remained with Morris, when the evening row was over, seated on the crumbling and weed-hampered old monument, until the shades of night began to creep over the ruin; and here they would perseveringly excite each others supernatural predilections -not fears-by the recital of the most approved and authentic tales of horror.

Notwithstanding the profound darkness of the corner in which the monument stood, Morris found no difficulty in occupying at its head the position named to him.

"Are you here with me to hold to your pledge ?" resumed the voice. "I am here to give you rest and quiet if I can."

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The mortal man who questions the dead ought to hold a fearful heart; or woe be to him."

"My heart is sthrong," said the courageous though eccentric lad; yet he uttered the words with some effort, for the voice which spoke now seemed fearfully menacing.

"The secrets of the dead must be kept as close as the grave keeps their rotting bones; or treble woe on the betrayer's head."

"I'll guard the silent tongue."

"He who meets the dead, and challenges the dead, must obey the dead, or tenfold woe be to him "

"Morris Brady will obey the dead!" "Swear an oath! swear it to the dead!"

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Morris hesitated.

"Swear! or rue this night! Swear!" It seemed to the young man as if, mingling with the gust, the tones were re-echoed, in shrieks, through every corner of the ruin.

"I will swear to you!" he, in his turn, screamed forth, as he stamped his foot on the rubbish on which he stood. "Lay your hand upon the prior's head."

Morris grasped the figure; but instead of touching, at the point where he expected to find it, the marble head of the effigy, his fingers passed over the front of a skull; he felt the eye-holes, and the nasal orifice, and that for the mouth. He recoiled an instant, but sufficiently recovered himself to replace his hand on the disagreeable object.

"Swear by the soul of him who has been murthered! swear by your own soul! swear by the darkness of the night! and swear by every spirit that hearkens to the oath to be silent, and to obey the dead!"

"Swear!" and Morris again spoke in a shout, and as if some will other than his own had moved his tongue.

"Follow me, now," continued the voice; and, as it ceased, the figure of the bosheen glided through the low archway into the burial ground without. Morris sprang after it. The apparition glided into an adjacent street of the town, by a turnstile at the boundary of the church-yard, and, with noiseless steps, hurried on.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FALL OF BADAJOS AND THE HORRORS OF WAR.

THE following, extracted from "Surtees's Twenty-five Years in the Rifle Brigade," will interest many of our readers.

"I was then in the mess of the senior captain of my battalion, who commanded it on this occasion; and my other messmates were poor little Croudace and Cary, both lieutenants, the latter acting adjutant, and another. We had taken a farewell glass before we got up from dinner, not knowing which of them would survive the bloody fray that was likely soon to commence. Poor Croudace, a native of the county of Durham, and consequently a near countryman, put into my hand a small leather purse, containing half a doubloon, and requested me to take care of it for him, as he did not know whose fate it might be to fall or to survive. I

took it according to his wish, and put it into my pocket, and, after a little more conversation, and another glass, for the poor little fellow liked his wine, we parted, and they moved off. Although I had thus, as it were, settled in my mind that I would not go with them on this occasion, for my services could have been of but very little utility, yet, when they went away, I felt as if I was left desolate, as it were, and was quite uneasy at parting from my beloved comrade, whom I had always accompanied hitherto. I therefore slung over my back my haversack, containing my pistol and a few other things, and moved forward, to try if I could find them; but falling in with some of my friends, staff-officers of the 43d, who were in the same brigade, they strongly dissuaded me from it, representing the folly of uselessly exposing myself, and the little service I could render there; and one of them requested me to accompany him to a hill immediately in front of the breaches, where we could see the business as it proceeded. We waited till about ten o'clock, when the first fire commenced from the castle upon the 3d division, as they approached it; but the fire from thence did not appear very heavy. Not long after, it opened out at the breaches, and was most awfully severe; indeed it was so heavy and so incessant, that it appeared like one continued sheet of fire along the ramparts near the breaches, and we could distinctly see the faces of the French troops, although the distance was near a mile. All sorts of arms, &c., were playing at once, guns, mortars, musketry, grenades and shells thrown from the walls, while every few minutes explosions from mines were taking place. The firing too appeared to have such a strange deathlike sound, quite different from all I had ever heard before. This was occasioned by the muzzles being pointed downwards into the ditch, which gave the report an unusual and appalling effect. This continued without a moment's cessation, or without any apparent advantage being gained by our struggling but awfully circumstanced comrades. Lord Wellington had also taken his stand upon this hill, and appeared quite uneasy at the troops seem~ ing to make no progress, and often asked, or rather repeated to himself, "What can be the matter ?" The enemy had adopted an excellent plan to ascertain where our columns were posted; they threw an immense num

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