man's return, the dead should appear to the
living.

The youth departed. The young lady by-and-
by married a Scotch gentleman, and quitted her
home, to be the light and ornament of his. She
was a devoted wife, but she never forgot her
brother. She corresponded with him regularly,
and her brightest days in all the year were those
which brought letters from India.

One cold winter's day, two or three years
after her marriage, she was seated at work near
a large bright fire, in her own bedroom up-stairs.
It was about mid-day, and the room was full of
light. She was very busy, when some strange
impulse caused her to raise her head and look
round. The door was slightly open, and, near
the large antique bed, stood a figure, which
she, at a glance, recognised as that of her
brother. With a cry of delight she started up,
and ran forward to meet him, exclaiming, "Oh,
Henry! How could you surprise me so! You
never told me you were coming!" But he
waved his hand sadly, in a way that forbade
approach, and she remained rooted to the spot.
He advanced a step towards her, and said, in
a low soft voice, "Do you remember our agreement?
I have come to fulfil it;" and approaching
nearer he laid his hand on her wrist. It
was icy cold, and the touch made her shiver.
Her brother smiled, a faint sad smile, and, again
waving his hand, turned and left the room.

When the lady recovered from a long swoon
there was a mark on her wrist, which never left
it to her dying day. The next mail from India
brought a letter, informing her that her brother
had died on the very day, and at the very hour,
when he presented himself to her in her room.*

* In the Beresford story, a similar ineffaceable
mark is said to have been made by an apparition on
a lady's wrist. It may be worth consideration
whether, under very exceptional and rare conditions,
there is thus developed in women any erratic
manifestation of the power a mother sometimes has,
of marking the body of her unborn child.

Overhanging the waters of the Frith of Forth
there lived, a good many years ago, a family of
old standing in the kingdom of Fife: frank,
hospitable, and hereditary Jacobites. It consisted
of the squire, or laird—a man well advanced in
years—his wife, three sons, and four daughters.
The sons were sent out into the world, but not
into the service of the reigning family. The
daughters were all young and unmarried, and
the eldest and the youngest were much attached
to each other. They slept in the same room,
shared the same bed, and had no secrets one
from the other. It chanced that among the
visitors to the old house there came a young
naval officer, whose gun-brig often put in to the
neighbouring harbours. He was well received,
and between him and the elder of the two
sisters a tender attachment sprang up.

But the prospect of such an alliance did not
quite please the lady's mother, and, without
being absolutely told that it should never take
place, the lovers were advised to separate. The
plea urged, was, that they could not then afford
to marry, and that they must wait for better
times. Those were times when parental
authority—at all events in Scotland—was like
the decree of fate, and the lady felt that she had
nothing left to do, but to say farewell to her lover.
Not so he. He was a fine gallant fellow, and,
taking the old lady at her word, he determined
to do his utmost to push his worldly fortunes.

There was war at that time with some northern
power—I think with Prussia—and the lover,
who had interest at tlie Admiralty, applied to be
sent to the Baltic. He obtained his wish.
Nobody interfered to prevent the young people
from taking a tender farewell of each other, and,
he full of hope, and she desponding, they parted.
It was settled that he should write by every
opportunity; and twice a week—on the post
days at the neighbouring village—the younger
sister would mount her pony and ride in for
letters. There was much hidden joy over every
letter that arrived, and then intense anxiety
until the next arrived. And often and often the
sisters would sit at the window a whole winter's
night listening to the roar of the sea among the
rocks, and hoping and praying that each light,
as it shone far away, might be the signal-lamp
hung at the mast-head to apprise them that the
gun-brig was coming. So weeks stole on in
hope deferred, and there came a lull in the
correspondence. Post-day after post-day brought
no letters from the Baltic, and the agony of the
sisters, especially of the betrothed, became almost
unbearable.

They slept, as I have said, in the same room,
and their window looked down well-nigh into the
waters of the Frith. One night, the younger
sister was awakened by the heavy moanings of
the elder. They had taken to burning a candle
in their room, and placing it in the window:
thinking, poor girls, that it would serve as a
beacon to the brig. She saw by its light that
her sister was tossing about, and was greatly
disturbed in her sleep. After some hesitation
she determined to awaken the sleeper,
who sprang up with a wild cry, and, pushing
back her long hair with her hands,
exclaimed, "What have you done, what have you
done!" Her sister tried to soothe her, and
asked tenderly if anything had alarmed her.
"Alarmed!" she answered, still very wildly,
"no! But I saw him! He entered at that
door, and came near the foot of the bed. He
looked very pale, and his hair was wet. He was
just going to speak to me, when you drove him
away. O what have you done, what have you
done."

I do not believe that her lover's ghost really
appeared, but the fact is certain that the next
mail from the Baltic brought intelligence that
the gun-brig had gone down in a gale of wind,
with all on board.

When my mother was a girl about eight or
nine years old, and living in Switzerland, the
Count R. of Holstein, coming to Switzerland for
his health, took a house at Vevay, with the