there at one period. Sundry cocks and hens
found out that the deserted rooms were good
places to roost in, but they were at Iength
driven out by the rats. At last a legend, which
had long lain dormant, was revived, and the
Cottage was declared to be haunted. The watchman,
who averred that he had seen sights " enuff
to make a man's marrer turn to hice," but was
otherwise (as is ordinarily the case with ghost-
seers) unable to particularise that which he had
seen, removed to other quarters; while people,
who hadn't seen anything, were, as usual, quite
ready to invest the supernatural visitants of the
Cottage with a definite form, only they were not
unanimous. There was a party for a lady in a
white nightgown much bedabbled with blood;
there was another (headed by the cook) who
placed implicit faith in the nocturnal appearance
of a figure with horns and hoofs, who vomited
sulphurous flames, and was supposed to be the
spectre of a deceased firework man, who had
sold himself to the Enemy of Mankind; while a
by no means uninfluential section, who pinned
their faith to the assertions of the chief lamp-
lighter, entertained no doubt whatever as to the
periodical issue from the Cottage of two skeleton
forms, mounted, one on the shoulders of the
other, on a black horse, with eyes of fire. These
were at once set down as the phantoms of the
dauntless but unfortunate Babylonian Brothers,
both of whom contrived to break their necks in
a dare-devil ring performance in the reign of
Manager Wobbel.

His subordinates thought Mr. McVariety a
very bold man, when, on assuming the lesseeship
of Ranelagh, he announced his intention of
living in the haunted Cottage. People tried to
dissuade him from the idea, but he laughed them
to scorn. " Just the very thing I've been trying
for all my life," he remarked, in answer to
their expostulations. " Only show me a
downright bonâ fide ghost," he said, "and if it's a he,
or if it's a she, I'll sign a three years' engagement
with that ghost at ten, fifteen, and twenty
pounds a week. What stunning double crown
posters we would have out about it to be sure.
Eh, Billy Van Post? 'The Ghost at Ranelagh:
no augmentation of prices.' It would be
tremendous." Mr. McVariety, it will be
remembered, lived slightly in advance of the
period when every manager throughout the
empire could have his ghost by application to
Professor Pepper.

Mr. McVariety, however, did not find it
possible to add a " downright bonâ fide ghost"
to the attractions of Ranelagh. His only
nocturnal visitors were rats, and they, yielding to
a judicious course of arsenical treatment,
speedily left the Cottage in the prosaic phase of
being rather an old-fashioned place, slightly
rickety, and not very weather-tight. The manager,
who had an eccentric fancy for occupying at
least half a score of residences at the same time—
his enemies ascribed to him as a motive for thus
multiplying his domicile a desire to " dodge" the
sheriffs of different counties who might possibly
have judgments against him—took a fancy into
his head that the Cottage would be a snug little
retreat when he was detained late in town, and
a pleasant change for him when he was tired of
his villa at Isleworth, his family residence in
Brompton, his big house near Dorset-square, his
chambers in Lyons Inn, and a queer little place,
half office, half dwelling-house, he occupied in a
triangular yard, beginning with a soap-boiler's
and ending with a livery-stable, but dignified
with the name of a square, and called after
some saint, which he occupied in the wilds of
Finsbury, somewhere between London-wall and
Bishopsgate.

He soon grew tired of the Cottage, however,
and said that it gave him the blues. He
christened it the " Dismal Swamp." He was,
perhaps, disappointed at finding no ghosts about
the premises. After a few weeks, he ceased to
reside there, and abandoned it to the occupation
of the celebrated Albino Family, from the Valley
of Dappes. The Albino Patriarch, his wife, and
four children, all with fuzzy heads of hair, like
spun glass, all with pink eyes, violet gums, teeth
of a pale mauve, and ass's milk complexions,
lived here for awhile. They were very quarrelsome,
and from black eyes and contused
noses distributed among them by the Patriarch
(who drank), were frequently rendered unfit for
exhibition. After this they returned to the
Valley of Dappes, where the youngest Albino
girl, being alone on the top of a high mountain
tending goats, was fortunate enough, in an
ecstatic vision, to have an interview with Saint
Teresa of Lima, who informed her that the
Valley of Dappes was going to the devil, through
the deplorable addictedness of the population to
drinking hard cider and reading the Siècle
newspaper on the Sabbath-day. She forthwith
became a miracle; the clergy took her up;
Monseigneur the Bishop absolutely condescended to
issue a mandement about her, gently hinting
that people who didn't believe in miracles in
general, and St. Teresa of Lima in particular,
were babes of perdition, and candidates for
perpetual brimstone; and the whole family did
much better than when they were at Ranelagh,
the pink-eyed Patriarch drinking more freely
than ever.

After their departure, and a brief interregnum,
during which nobody to speak of, save a mouldy
man in a snuff-coloured coat, a Scotch cap, and
a red worsted comforter, the fringes of which
he used as a pocket-handkerchief, who had his
dinner (generally consisting of tripe, liver, or
some other visceral matter) sent him daily in a
basin, drank cold coffee out of a black bottle
labelled " rue gin," read with great persistency
a pamphlet containing a report of the murder
of Lord William Russell by Benjamin
Courvoisier, and was stated to be in the employ of
the Sheriff of Surrey—after the transitory
occupation of the Cottage by this personage,
another family were billeted there by the
hospitable Mr. McVariety. These were the
Ouli Zoug Zoug Arabs from Mecca. There
was a grandfather, who was a sheikh, and wore
a green turban, but was one night recognised