And when in brighter worlds we meet again,
And welcome those we lost at Heaven's wide
portal,
The dearest ties of life shall still remain;
Hearts shall be ours which we had shared when
mortal.

THE DEATH OF A GOBLIN.

There is a bye-street, called the Pallant, in
an old cathedral city—a narrow carriage-way,
which leads to half-a-dozen antique mansions.
A great number of years ago, when I began
to shave, the presence of a very fascinating
girl induced me to make frequent calls upon
an old friend of our family who lived in one
of the oldest of these houses, a plain, large
building of red brick. The father, and the
grandfather, and a series of great great great
and other grandfathers of the then occupant,
Sir Francis Holyoke, had lived and died
beneath its roof. So much I knew; and I
had inkling of a legend in connexion with the
place, a very horrible affair. How and when
I heard the story fully told, I have good
reason to remember.

"We were in the great dark wainscoted
parlour one December evening; papa was
out. I sat with Margaret by the fireside, and
saw in the embers visions of what might come
to pass, but never did. Ellen was playing at
her harpsichord in a dark corner of the room,
singing a quaint and cheerful duet out of
Grétry's Coeur de Lion with my old
school-fellow, Paul Owen, a sentimental youth, who
became afterwards a martyr to the gout, and
broke his neck at a great steeple-chase. " The
God of Love a bandeau wears," those two
were singing. Truly, they had their own
eyes filleted. The fire-light glow, when it
occasionally flickered on the cheek over which
Paul was bending, could not raise the
semblance of young health upon its shining
whiteness. That beautiful white hand was fallen
into dust before Paul Owen had half earned
the wedding-ring that should encircle it.

"Thanks to you, sister—thanks, too, to
Grétry for a pleasant ditty. Now, don't let
us have candles. Shall we have ghost
stories ?"
" What! in a haunted house?"
" The very thing," cried Paul; " let us
have all the story of the Ghost of Holyoke.
I never heard it properly."

Ellen was busy at her harpsichord again,
with fragments from a Stabat Mater. Not
Rossini's luscious lamentation, but the deep
pathos of that Italian, who in days past
"mœrebat et dolebat," who moved the people
with his masterpiece, and was stabbed to
death by a rival at the cathedral door.
" Why, Ellen, you look as if you feared the
ghosts."
" No, no," she said; " we know it is an idle
tale. Go to the fire, Paul, and I will keep
you solemn with the harpsichord, in order that
you may not laugh while Margaret is telling it."

"Well, then," began Margaret, " of course
this story is all nonsense."
" Of course it is," said I.
" Of course it is," said Paul.
Ellen continued playing.
" I mean," said Margaret, " that really and
truly no part of it can possibly be anything
but fiction. Papa, you know, is a great
genealogist, and he says that our
ancestor, Godfrey of Holyoke, died in the Holy
Land, and had two sons, but never had a
daughter. Some old nurse made the tale
that he died here, in the house, and had a
daughter Ellen. This daughter Ellen, says
the tale, was sought in marriage by a young
knight who won her good-will, but could not
get her father's. That Ellen—very much
unlike our gentle, timid sister in the corner
there—was proud and wilful. She and her
father quarrelled. His health failed, because,
the story hints mysteriously, she put a slow
and subtle poison into his after-supper cup
night after night. One evening they quarrelled
violently, and the next morning Sir Godfrey
was gone. His daughter said that he had left
the house in anger with her. The tale,
determined to be horrible, says that she poisoned
him outright, and with her own hands buried
him in an old cellar under this room. That
cellar-door is fastened with a padlock, to
which there is no key remaining. Not being
wanted, it has not been opened probably for
scores of years."
"Well!"
" Well in a year or two the daughter married,
and in time had children scampering
about this house. But her health failed. The
children fell ill, and, excepting one or two, all
died. One night—"
" Yes."
" One night she lay awake through care;
and in the middle of the night a figure like
her father came into the room, holding a cup
like that from which he used to drink after
his supper. It moved inaudibly to where she
lay, placed the cup to her lips; a chill came
over her. The figure passed away, but in a
few minutes she heard the shutting of the
cellar-door. After that she was often kept
awake by dread, and often saw that she was
visited. She heard the cellar-door creak on
its hinge, and knew it was her father coming.
Once she watched all night by the sick bed of
her eldest child; the goblin came, and put the
cup to her child's lips; she knew then that
her children who were dead, and she herself
who was dying, and that child of hers, had
tasted of her father's poison. She died young.
And ever since that time, the legend says,
Sir Godfrey walks at night, and puts his fatal
goblet to the lips of his descendants, of the
children and children's children of his cruel
child. It is quite true that sickliness and
death occur more frequently among those who
inhabit this house than is to be easily
accounted for. So story-tellers have accounted
for it, as you see. But it is certain that