the writing as plainly
as can be, in these words: 'Steer to the nor'-west.' That, and no
more.--Ah, goodness me, narrating is dry work, Mr. Germaine. With your
leave, I'll take another drop of the sherry wine.

"Well (it's fine old wine, that; look at the oily drops running down the
glass)--well, steering to the north-west, you will understand, was
out of the captain's course. Nevertheless, finding no solution of the
mystery on board the ship, and the weather at the time being fine, the
captain determined, while the daylight lasted, to alter his course, and
see what came of it. Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg
came of it; with a wrecked ship stove in, and frozen fast to the ice;
and the passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion.
Wonderful enough, you will say; but more remains behind. As the mate
was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the bark, who
should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly appearance Bruce
had seen in the captain's cabin writing on the captain's slate! And more
than that--if your capacity for being surprised isn't clean worn out by
this time--the passenger recognized the bark as the very vessel which he
had seen in a dream at noon that day. He had even spoken of it to one
of the officers on board the wrecked ship when he woke. 'We shall be
rescued to-day,' he had said; and he had exactly described the rig of
the bark hours and hours before the vessel herself hove in view. Now you
know, Mr. Germaine, how my wife's far-away cousin kept an appointment
with a ghost, and what came of it."*

Concluding his story in these words, the doctor helped himself to
another glass of the "sherry wine." I was not satisfied yet; I wanted to
know more.

"The writing on the slate," I said. "Did it remain there, or did it
vanish like the writing in my book?"

Mr. MacGlue's answer disappointed me. He had never asked, and had never
heard, whether the writing had remained or not. He had told me all
that he knew, and he had but one thing more to say, and that was in the
nature of a remark with a moral attached to it. "There's a marvelous
resemblance, Mr. Germaine, between your story and Bruce's story. The
main difference, as I see it, is this. The passenger's appointment
proved to be the salvation of a whole ship's company. I very much doubt
whether the lady's appointment will prove to be the salvation of You."

I silently reconsidered the strange narrative w