safely shut up in his lit clos (or wonderful Breton cupboard arranged as a bed), he did not care if the sea were to come in to the floor. The poorest shanties have their bedstead and armoire, mostly of fine-grained wood, and beautifully carved. This particular auberge had its whole side filled up with the family sleeping arrangements, all constructed in one single piece of furniture. A sort of tall, beautifully carved cupboard extended the whole length of the wall, which contained a bed at either end and an upright clock in the middle-a clock like the kitchen clock of our ancestors. During the daytime the bedding is invisible, as also, I suppose, during the night, for it is reached through two little sliding-doors, having little dwarf pillars for the admission of air. The doors are only opened to admit or give egress to the tenants. Day and night they are kept shut, so that you may go into such a room (as I have done) at midnight without seeing man, woman, or child, until the little doors slide back, and a whole family of heads peep out from within what may be called a night parlor. Add to this lit clos an armoire (a cupboard with large folding-doors), a few pots and pans, a form or two, and a table, and you have a complete inventory of a Breton house, whether it be occupied by a farmer or a laborer. A year ago I went to see a château which was to be let. It belonged to a rich peasant farmer who, when he bought the estate, moved straight into the stable, and I saw him there with cows, horses, pigs, and servants, only divided from his dwellingroom by a slight wooden partition. I put the servants with the cattle, because it was literally so arranged; one man slept in a little box bedstead in a stable with ten cows, an arrangement which my farmer said was necessary, in case they broke loose in the night.

As the Breton peasant lives in a sort of primitive way amid the cattle, so he thinks and acts in a primitive way also. His ideas are few, and those few descend to him from his ancestors. I suppose that, with the exception of the crying abuses arising from priestly power, supported by the state in the middle ages, and priestly misconduct in accordance with the very rude life of those ages, the religion of Brittany remains much as it was in the days of St. Louis.

Farmer Jean has just returned from a pilgrimage of three weeks to Lourdes, which numbered fifteen hundred Bretons, nearly all of the peasantry. He must have spent a good deal of money-what with the railway and the hotels! It seems odd to speak of railways and hotels in connection with pilgrimages, and, in very fact, it is odd, for one naturally expects that the enlargement of view, the new ideas arising from the first, and the luxury suggested by the last, would be

the most effectual agents in arresting mediæval customs; and so they will be in time, but for the moment they are caught at and made to serve the turn of those who live and thrive on this strange and antique superstition. Many a temporary expedient to revive a dying dream does but make more sure the final awakening.

My bonne, Françoise, has also been on her pilgrimage, and has experienced a real miracle, worked upon herself, to which I can give the whole weight of my disinterested testimony.

At

Françoise was quite noted as a drinker-she had almost fallen into the ruck of life, and was considered irredeemable, when, all of a sudden, she took off her shoes and stockings, and started for a particular saint's abode to get cured of her drunkenness. Barefooted she went, and barefooted she returned, cured and in her right mind. For six months she tasted no fermented drinks, but solaced herself with vinegar-and-water. the end of six months she went again barefooted to return thanks to the bon Dieu for her miracle. She lives now in our house, and is as sober as a judge (ought to be), and as lively as a cricket. This miracle I can attest, and if it lasts it will indeed be a miracle, and a proof of the power of means to an end, even although the means should only prove to be the action of the mind upon itself. What man can not do alone, he can do with the help of a little well-acted fiction, with the dramatis persona and final tableau all duly arranged in the mind beforehand. Françoise thinks that she has her familiar devil, who thwarts her at all points and strives to make her swear. Yesterday she attempted to light a candle with a burning stick, and several times failed. She accused her devil with his villainy, but at last she lighted the candle and exclaimed, “Ah, I have conquered, and you did not make me swear"; but as she placed the candle on the table it went out, and she mournfully remarked, "No, he has conquered, after all." All these ideas are common to our Breton folk.

These people do not look dirty. Their dress is always decent, and on fête-days it is beautiful as well as costly. Yet I believe that a Breton peasant never washes once in his life. I never saw any washing apparatus in any of their rooms, nor did I ever see one of them washing in a tub, or at a stream, or at the well. None can have better opportunities of observation than I have. Opposite my window is the well, the one watersupply of a settlement; to it all must come for water, yet I never saw one wash anything but clothes at or about it. Really and truly they are and must be as dirty as the pigs who live and sleep at their bedsides. In all my dealings with them, I give them a wide berth, especially the children, and experience fully justifies my caution.

Winter in Brittany is a terrible time, a time of incessant rain, of roads so bad as to be practically impassable, of long, gloomy days without sunshine. I can not recommend Brittany for a winter home, for home in its English sense there is none. The houses are not constructed for coziness. Rooms communicate one with another so as to be full of doors. There are no really comfortable lounges or easy-chairs, no fireplaces which suggest slippers and a nice book, no bedrooms where an invalid's chamber could be made almost more bright than the general sitting-room. Bedrooms are, even in grand houses, mostly mere cupboards. It is true that in a very large château you will find one or two rooms intended as staterooms, and furnished as boudoirs with an alcove for the bed, but these are rare, and the furniture even of these is stilty, showy, and offers no repose. No man must speak against French beds. They at least are perfect; England stands in this respect with regard to France as a savage, barbarous country. I speak not of form of bedstead. I rail not against ancient fourpost, tester, or canopy. I speak of thick, soft, downy mattresses, piled thickly upon a sommier or framework with springs. I know that in some English houses, and in most English hotels, a faint imitation of these French beds exists, but how far behind the criginals are these faint copies! English people stint the mattresses, they stint also the material with which they are stuffed, and, worse still, they have a perfectly incurable habit of pressing their wool or horse-hair or flock as hard as they can until it is like sleeping on a board; on the contrary, all is loose in a real French bed, so loose that it can be opened and remade at home annually, instead of waiting for years and years as in an English house, and then taking an expensive journey to Maple & Co., or Heal & Co., who do it by steam in their wonderful mills.

In winter the Breton peasant shows himself more truly as he is than at any other time of the year, for he has a house whose floor is something between a puddle and a pigsty; he has clothes which are almost always damp, if not wringing wet; he has no sort of home comfort, and seems to seek none. Many of these men are not only comparatively but absolutely rich. For instance, Jean, our farmer, is worth at least twenty thousand francs, or eight hundred pounds, no mean sum for a workingman even in England, yet his one desire is to increase his store, and he never dreams of procuring any winter comforts. His is not at all a special case, although he is dying in a rapid consumption. Two years ago the doctor told him that he must give up exposing himself to cold and damp or he would soon die; yet he has not given up, and, as a consequence,

he is dying. A few days ago I heard that he was very ill in bed, spitting blood, so I paid him a visit and found him very bad indeed. His room was wet as wet could be; it had no curtains, the front door was wide open, the fire a few hot coals of wood, which were kept there to be blown into a flame when needed for cooking or farm purposes. He had no medicine, no special food, but was living like the others on black-rye bread and buckwheat galettes or pancakes. I told him how ill I thought him in the presence of his wife, and in the night he alarmed her by vomiting blood, so that she came to me in the morning crying, and asking what she ought to do for him. I told her to get him warmth, meat, soup, and other comforts, and she went just as far as this: she bought two pounds' weight of white bread. When this white bread came home, her mother (Jean's mother-in-law), who lives with them, went into a passion and sulked all day long, as she declared that it was wild extravagance. You must know that for days I had sent him soup, meat, and pastry from my own table, partly because I felt that he must have help at once, and partly because I could not bear to see the man dying before my eyes from sheer want, for he could not eat the ordinary coarse food, and took nothing at all. They received all my gifts almost without thanks, and never stirred hand or foot to get anything for themselves until the day when Yvonne bought the white bread. Well, on that day, when her mother was raging, she came crying into the kitchen, and told my bonne how she was tried. The bonne told me at once, and protested that I ought not to keep on sending food to a rich man, who was a miser and surrounded by two miserly women, when real poor might be stretching out their hands for help. I replied that I had never refused to help any real poor yet, and that I intended to continue my help to Jean, notwithstanding his miserly behavior, as I could not see a man die of want while I had enough. But I told her to scold Yvonne well, and to tell her that she ought to do her duty by her husband, and, if necessary, turn her mother out of the house, especially as she was a rich woman and well able to keep a home of her own. Now mark Yvonne's reply: "Ah, I can't do that, because my husband may soon die, and then I shall want my mother's help." Mark, I say, this reply, its utter selfishness, and say, is there any real depth, any real worth, in such characters as these? I think not.

The weather changed, and Jean has for a little moment got better, but he can not live many months; already he has been out in the rain, and in a few days will be in bed vomiting blood again. When very bad indeed, his wife besought me, as I was going to the doctor ten miles away myself, to

ask for some remedy to stop the blood-spitting of Jean. I did so, and explained also the condition of the house and family. The doctor, who is a very clever fellow, told me that he knew them all well, and that there would be a very evil day for

Yvonne soon. I said, "Will the man die very soon?" "Yes!" said he, "but that is not the evil day I mean; there will be a far more unhappy day for her when she comes to me after he is buried to pay my bill." Cornhill Magazine.

THE

CHAPTER XXVII.

HOW GILBERT READ THE MANUSCRIPT.

WHEN

THEN Alison left him, Gilbert, after the fashion of his generation, began to soothe his soul with tobacco on the road which runs along the cliff down to the beach. So far, all promised well; here was the grave of the mother, but where was the proof of her marriage? Perhaps, after all, his difficulties were only beginning.

Gilbert was in love. He would have been just as much in love had Alison been penniless; but it must be owned that to a briefless young barrister, fully alive to the advantages possessed by him who possesses a fortune, the fact of her splendid heritage heightened the charms of the young lady, and gave a lasting stability to his passion. And he could not avoid asking himself what would happen if this fortune were to be withdrawn? Married love on three hundred a year (which I fear represented the whole of Gilbert Yorke's fortune) would be delightful, with Alison for bride, could those superfluities of life which custom has rendered necessaries for most of us be abolished. For dinner, a beefsteak and a glass of beer; for breakfast, tea, stale eggs, cheap butter; for lunch, a sandwich and a glass of beer: no society, no driving, no silks and pretty things for the wife; no wine, cigars, new books, pictures, little excursions in the country, stalls at the theatre, or clubs for the husband. To live like a wretched City clerk in a rickety boxone of a thousand rickety boxes-somewhere about Brixton or Stockwell. That might be the life.

Somehow the spirit of the place depressed him. He tried to look on things from a more cheerful point of view: he bethought him that he was young and strong; he remembered that the whole world was open to him to go where he pleased, and to try his fortune in whatever way should seem possible. They would go together

-he and Alison-hand in hand, and buy a farm in New Zealand-Canada-somewhere.

The sunny side of things would not last; depression and gloom returned; he went back to the hotel, and gloomily went to bed.

"I shall have a good night's rest," he said, laying his head upon the pillow, "and wake up in better spirits to-morrow."

Nothing is easier than to promise one's self a good night's rest; nothing, however, is more uncertain. There is one man, and only one, who never fails to get it; he is the man who is going to be hanged early the next morning. Those unfortunates-the bulk of mankind-who can not look forward to a quiet and comfortable execution at break of day, have nothing for it but to meet their pillows with a nightly sense of doubt.

Generally Gilbert had no trouble in the matter of sleep; but to-night he felt strangely restless and wakeful. The excitement of the day, the long talk with Alison, the strange feeling that she was under the same roof with him, kept him awake. And then he thought of the place itself, so full of sorrowful memories, and the churchyard so crowded with those whom death had called too soon, and ere their prime.

He went through the usual steps or phases of sleeplessness, trying first one side and then another: anon lying on his back, heaping up the pillows, and then tossing them aside. The night was profoundly silent; he could not even hear the murmur of the water as it washed the stones a hundred feet away; there was no wind in the air; there was no footfall in the street below; and he grew more wide awake every moment. At last he sprang up in a rage, and resolved to try the remedy recommended by Franklin the Eminent. Benjamin, as everybody knows, recommends the sufferers in such cases to get out of bed, fold back the clothes, smooth the pillow, walk about a little, and then try the pillow again. Gilbert did so—that is, he got out of bed, and began to walk up and down the narrow limits of the room. But it was perfectly dark; he did not know the

position of the furniture; and, when he had barked his elbows, broken his shins, scraped his nose, and blackened one eye by unexpected contact with different pieces of furniture, he finally drove sweet sleep far away by treading on the business-end of a small tin-tack. The difficulty and pain of extracting the nail naturally made him more wakeful than ever. He sat upon the bed, and wondered what he should do next.

The second remedy, first recommended by some anonymous philosopher, is to drink a glass of water and lie down again. He found the carafe, drank half of it, and lay down again. The immediate result of this internal aspersion was to make him feel as if every limb were separately hung upon wires, and either would not or could not keep still. When your arms and legs begin to jerk about independently, and without your own control, it is high time to sit up and consider what to do next. Gilbert pacified his limbs by letting them walk about until they agreed to give up independent action.

The third remedy is perhaps the best and most certain: it is to read very carefully, and with great attention, the dullest book you can find. I keep some of the works of a very eminent modern writer by my own bedside always with that object, and it never fails. In this instance it was impossible, because there were no books in the room.

There remained the fourth and last remedy known to the faculty. It is to begin counting, and go on till you fall asleep. It is currently believed that no one ever yet got as far as a thousand. Gilbert reached twelve hundred and thirty-two, then he stopped in disgust, for it seemed as if he were going to pass the rest of his life in counting.

So he sat up again and tried to persuade himself that he had got through a good part of the night.

And then, quite suddenly, there came over him a curious shivering accompanied by a nervous terror, the like of which he had never before experienced.

I have observed that if you put the question delicately, so as not in any way to hurt a man's self-respect, or arouse a suspicion of ridicule, you will in every case and from every man extort a confession that at some time or place he has been afraid of ghosts. Remark that I do not say "feel supernatural terrors" or any circumlocution of that kind; I say simply "afraid of ghosts."

Bournemouth is naturally chock-full of ghosts. Gilbert had been wandering in the place of tombs; his thoughts therefore turned to the subject. He was not a man who generally gave much heed to the unseen occupants of the air;

but to-night he felt them, they became importunate, they would not be denied. As he sat on the bed in the dark they fanned his cheek and played soft airs upon his hands.

He thought against his will of those who had come to the place, like Dora Hamblin, to die; he thought of the multitudinous crosses in the cemetery, the graves of young lives cut off in their first promise and early flower; he thought of the great cloud of sorrow which was for ever enveloping this city of slow death, like the cloud which day and night hangs over Sheffield.

More salutary reflections would have followed, because he was quite in the mood to meditate "like anything," or like Young, Hervey, and Drelincourt, when he was suddenly arrested by the recollection that there were matches in his pocket, and that he had not yet looked at the manuscript given him by Alison.

Going gingerly for fear of another tin-tack, point upward, he found the matches and lit his candle. Every ghost in the room instantly flew away in disgust-which shows the value of a candle. He then looked for the manuscript in his portmanteau, put the candle on a chair by the bedside, arranged the sheets so that in case of his going to sleep suddenly, a thing which he fully expected to do while reading the paper, the candle would be unable to fall over and set fire to everything. It was Sydney Smith, I think, who anticipated me in calling attention to the malignant behavior of bedside candles in this respect.

We know the contents of the manuscript. It was that which Rachel Nethersole had given to Anthony Hamblin.

Gilbert did not go to sleep suddenly and unexpectedly. On the contrary, he sat up and read the papers through with no abatement of interest to the very end, but, on the other hand, with an excitement which increased until he had fairly finished the last word. Then he laid the papers down on the bed, and, between his lips, cursed the name and the memory of a man.

Of all men in the world, that Anthony Hamblin should have been so inconceivable a villain ! That he, whom all alike loved to honor and reverence, the very model of a blameless man, should have left in this cruel and heartless manner the poor young wife; that he should have descended to the meanness, he with his practically boundless wealth, of actually cutting down her miserable weekly allowance-why, it was astounding; it was beyond all belief and all precedent.

When one tried to look the matter fairly in the face, the difficulty was only increased. If a man leads two lives, one for his household and the world, and the other for himself alone, there

is always some vague rumor concerning him which gets about, and spreads, as noiselessly as an ivy, around his name. The wife and daughters do not know; the sons learn something of it, and, after passionately denying the thing, sorrowfully accept it; the outside fringe of cousinhood learn something of it; it is impossible for a man to conceal altogether his secret vices, because there must be some accomplices whose interest in keeping them secret is not so strong as his own, and whose shame at their discovery would be, perhaps, just nothing at all, a thing not worth considering. Gilbert was a man who knew the world—that is, he knew about as much of the seamy side as a young man of five-andtwenty or so, not of vicious habits, naturally acquires by conversation and intercourse with his fellows. This kind of knowledge, in fact, is a part of the armor in which we have to fight the battle of life. With many men it does duty for the whole armor of light.

Had Anthony Hamblin been a man secretly addicted to evil courses, some one would have known it: there would have been a breath upon that shining mirror; but there was none. And yet the man who at fifty was so admirable in all the relations of life must have been, by plain showing of his own deserted wife, base and mean, at thirty, beyond all belief! The wonder grew more and more. Could one with any sense of continuity pass back from Anthony Hamblin at fifty, living wholly for the happiness of his daughter, to Anthony Hamblin at thirty, leaving his wife to pine away forgotten and despised, coming to her bedside only at the last moment when she called him, in despair, when she was dying of neglect and cruelty? In the case of ordinary sinners one can trace the same man through all his downward course: if he repents and leads a new life, he is still visibly and demonstrably the same man; but it was impossible to recognize in the later Anthony Hamblin any resemblance to the demon of selfishness who, twenty years before, had borne the same name. Gilbert remembered one or two old stories. There was a certain King of Sicily whose body was once occupied by an angel for three whole years, during which all brigands became penitent, the burglar laid down with the policeman, and the jail-bird with the judge. The real king, meantime, went in rags, and got kicked because he was poor. There was another story, too, of a nun who wanted to see the world, and went out of her convent and carried on anyhow for nineteen years, until she repented (being no longer beautiful), and returned (being desperately hard up) to the convent. She naturally thought that in spite of repentance she would catch it, but what was her surprise to find that her absence

during all these years had been unknown to the Sisters, because an angel had been doing her work and personating her? So she repented in very truth, and was pardoned, and died in sanctity.

But this was just a contrary case. The devil had certainly occupied the body of Anthony Hamblin for a time. How did he get in? By what contract, temptation, or promise was he admitted? How long did he stay? What other devilry did he work? Was there any record of his pranks and villainies? How was he finally got rid of? Alas! Anthony Hamblin himself, who alone could reveal this secret, was dead, and the story of the new demoniac could never, therefore, be given to the world in its entirety. For this paper, no doubt, contained but a single episode.

"It is wonderful," said Gilbert, looking round. "Good Heavens! If one had been asked for the name of the most upright, the most kind-hearted, the most unselfish man in London, every one who knew Anthony Hamblin would have named him; and see what he was!"

"Most to be pitied is Alison. She must never know how her idol has been shattered. Rachel Nethersole must not tell her. In comparison with this father of hers, even Black Stephen shows in rosy colors. Poor Alison ! poor child!"

These were, so to speak, the last words of Anthony himself.

Just then, the candle, which had been flickering in the socket, suddenly went out. Gilbert rose and pulled up the blind. The day was already breaking, and there was promise of a bright and splendid morning; he opened the window and breathed the cool air, and then-then-I think-nay, I am sure-that he went to sleep and had a dream, in spite of what he says himself. Because, as for what followed, his own account is silly, as you shall judge for yourselves.

First of all, it was not dark; a cloudless night in June is never dark; then it was not a ghostlike room, but a singularly prosaic and matterof-fact kind of room, a modern, square, newly built hotel bedroom, and yet to the heated imagination of the young man it suddenly became full of ghosts.

Some years ago, there was a controversy about ghosts. A sapient philosopher thought he demolished all but naked ghosts—a very, very small minority, I am happy to say-by the simple axiom that you can not expect the ghost of a coat, a gown, a pair of gloves, in fact, not the ghost of any article of clothing at all. This maxim was thought at the time so profound that men quarreled as to who was its founder. For my own part, I denied the proposition. I asked for proof, and I put a question which has never