was considered the only chance of baffling the
disease. I would have given worlds to see him
before he left Europe; but my duty and my
poverty combined to keep me at my post.

"The events of ''58' and ''59' are as familiar
to you as to me. I won my company at San
Martino. At Solferino——" As Bertani
pronounced the word, a deadly pallor whitened
his already pale face, and his eyes resumed that
fixed gaze which had so startled me.

"—At Solferino my life was saved, thus.
I was in the thick of the battle where the
fight raged hottest, and I had reached that
of furious excitement in which only the
wild beast instinct of destruction seems to
animate a man, when I felt a gentle pressure
turn my head, aside, and I felt ice–cold fingers
passed lightly through my hair. At that same
instant a bullet whistled past my ear. It passed
so close to me that it seemed as if the difference
of a hair's breadth would have buried it in my
brain. I knew then, and I know now, that the
hand that saved me was Gustav's. I recognised
the touch of that hand, and the peculiar caress
I had so often received from it, as instantly and
certainly as though my friend had been standing
bodily by my side; nor did I need the fatal news
that came to me. Within six weeks I received a
letter from Madame von Hildesheim, written
(these were her words) in compliance with her
son's last and most urgent request. Gustav
had died in Egypt, on the very day and at the
very hour when I had felt his hand amidst my hair
upon the battle–field of Solferino."

Bertani's voice thrilled me in every nerve,
and I shuddered. "Was that," I asked, "the
only occasion on which you have experienced
the mysterious touch?"

He answered softly, "I felt it once again when
I was lying sick in hospital, with the sabre-cut
in my thigh, received that same day of Solferino.
How I came by it I know not, for, after the
hand had touched me, I remember nothing until
I found myself stretched on a hospital pallet, with
the surgeon dressing my wound. I got brain
fever after that, and was delirious, they tell me.
One night as I opened my aching eyes to stare
at the dull flicker from the lamp that wavered
on the whitewashed ceiling, I felt the cold soft
fingers stroke my hair, and immediately a tight hot
band of pain seemed loosened from my temples,
and I slept. Next day I awoke—weak, it is
true, but refreshed and free from fever. My
time was not yet come."

"Granted that all this was so," I urged
"why should you despond, and say that you are
never again to be the man you were? This
beneficent hand has brought you nothing but
good."

"True," returned Bertani, "true. And you
rightly call it a beneficent hand. But the next
time I feel its touch, it will summon me away,
to join my friend in the awful spirit-world."

"Why should you think so?"

"I do not think it," he answered. "I know
it. I have an assurance within me that the
third touch of that dear dead hand will convey
my death-signal. Look!" he now added, bending
forward; "those spirit-fingers have left a
visible trace behind them."

He removed the crimson smoking-cap he
always wore, and then I saw, running from
brow to crown, in startling contrast with the
raven blackness of the rest, one streak of hair
about a finger's breadth as white as driven
snow.

Towards the end of this present year of grace
1860, when the Italian troops made their entry
into Venice, I was there, one of many strangers.
Bertani was there too, and I saw him among
a brilliant knot of distinguished officers. Next
morning, when his servant went to call him, he
was found dead in his bed. It was at the moment
of my coming up the staircase that Gabor
(a Hungarian, and I believe a deserter from the
Austrians) rushed out with the cry: "Death,
death, death!" upon his lips.

We went into the solemn room together. Captain
Angelo Bertani lay peacefully on his pillow,
with a smile on his face, and his hair all pushed
back from his brow, as if his mother's hand had
soothed him to sleep.

I felt a thrill of terror at the sight. But I
forebore to speak of the mystery to the
Hungarian soldier, and I held the hand of my old
friend to my breast in silence.

Now ready, stitched in a cover, price Fourpence,
                MUGBY JUNCTION.
  THE EXTRA NUMBER FOR CHRISTMAS.
                      CONTENTS.