"But his regiment, was it the—th
Highlanders?"

"Why, how do you know that?" asked the
man, roused from his apathy.

"Black hair, dark blue eyes, thick eyebrows
that touched?"

"Well, you arn't a fairy, are you?"

"No," said Mrs. Applebee, "I'm his mother."

"His mother!"

"Yes. Now you take me to Alice, and look
sharp about it," said the brisk old dame, "for
I'm a cooking here, and 've got to be back in a
jiffey."

The man looked at her, and led the way. On
a wretched pallet, in the miserable hovel to
which the family had descended, lay the once-
envied beauty of the hamlet, a querulous,
desponding invalid, nursing a yet more weakly
child.

How the very presence of the comfortable
old lady seemed to bring relief and blessing,
and how the good creature brought the deserted
ones to believe that they saw in her the instrument
of a merciful Providence, to help and
comfort them in their great extremity, we have
not space to tell. The interview, though
earnest, was necessarily short. For the time,
Mrs. Applebee had to hurry away. Alice
detained her for a moment, both with hand and
eyes, as she asked:

"But how, dear, good woman, did you trace
me out?"

"Bless you, my dear, I was warned!" said
the old lady, and trotted away.

That evening, in the study, Mrs. Applebee
accorded to the family certain explanations,
subsequently embodied by Mr. Gauntrell in the
following singular statement, to which we beg the
reader's attention.

In the spring of eighteen 'fifty-five, being the
second year of the campaign of Sebastopol, Mrs.
Applebee received a letter signed by her son,
then lying, severely wounded, in hospital at
Balaclava, in which, after declaring his belief
that he should not recover, he related to her the
whole affair of Alice. Her name and place of
abode were, however, left blank by his
amanuensis—the young man no doubt intending to
supply these important particulars with his own
hand. This, either from forgetfulness, increasing
weakness, or from some cause never
ascertained, had not been done, and Mrs. Applebee
was thus left without any clue to the mother
and child whom, in the early part of the letter,
she was affectionately adjured to seek out and
relieve.

It was known that young Applebee had been
despatched, among a ship-load of sick and
wounded, to Scutari; but here all trace of him
was lost. The vessel, half-disabled on her
passage, had to put back to refit, and, in this
interval, he might have died, as did many others,
or it is possible he might have ultimately
breathed his last in the hospital-ward at
Scutari, at a period when deaths were numerous,
and the identity of the fever-stricken or
unconscious patients often lost and confounded.

One evening, towards the close of that anxious
year, Mrs. Applebee was sitting in the house-
keeper's room of a large country mansion, near
Carleon, of which she had taken charge in the
absence of the proprietor. She had had a
bustling day, and, overcome with fatigue, dozed,
and had a dream. She thought that, while still
sitting in her accustomed chair, the room began
to fill with a whitish light, which presently grew
into amazing lustre, and that, at its height, an
impression was conveyed to her, without spoken
language, that the appearance concerned her
son, and the message he had sent her.

"But what can I do, my dear?" the
slumbering old lady had demanded, addressing the
light.

An answer was returned, in the wordless
manner before described, to the effect that,
when the appearance should next recur, the
object of it, Alice, would be close at hand.

Thenceforth, the existence of Mrs. Applebee
was a condition of expectation, fidget, and
dream. Attaching an undue importance to the
visions of the night, the good lady trotted about
in fancied obedience to them, no whit
discouraged by her frequent disappointments.

One night she had a singularly vivid dream
of sitting in the parlour of a temperance hotel,
in Abergavenny, and seeing a handsome young
man, "likewise pale," said Mrs. Applebee, "who
said (don't laugh, 'm, please), 'you're to come
and be our cook.' When I saw Mr. Richard"
(with a curtsey), "I knew he was my young
man."

"When I saw him" repeated the old lady,
"I knew I should soon see the other (meaning
the apparition) also, and shortly find his Alice.
I have enough, thanks be to God, to make her
comfortable, and so I will, only staying with
you, ma'am, as long as ever you pleases to want
me.

"And now my story's done, and I don't
think, my dears—young ladies, I would say—
that you'll hear of any more ghostes at
Grisewood Cottage."

It is a fact, that they never did.

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,
In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
"Pickwick," "Copperfleld," &c.
Now publishing, PART XIV., price Is., of
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.