to my room, thrown
myself into a reclining-chair, deliciously tired as one can
only be after a long day of Swiss mountain life. The door was
open, the room full of pleasant twilight, the three ladies
safe in their tower close by. I was thinking and wondering
about them, when I heard a rustling at the opposite end of
the room. Now, as you know, the place being spacious as a
banqueting-hall, objects at a distance, especially in the
half-light, might easily deceive one. This was what I thought
as I saw by the window a girlish form in black, with
something white at the neck and sleeves. I rubbed my hands
across my eyes, looked again, and, lo! my vision had vanished
completely, noiselessly, without moving from the spot; for
there had not been time to move. I sprang up and crossed the
room. On the window-ledge was a rose, and the rose was red.

"Another curious thing--the ghost-lady of the tower,
according to her own authority, was forty-nine in the year
1698. I don't know how ghosts manage about their age, but my
ghost of this evening couldn't have been over nineteen.

"Well, I have told my story. I wait for you to suggest the
explanation of the second part; the first will explain itself
when I bring to you, in a few days at most, and with the
hearty consent and approval of the castle's present
proprietor, the Countess Maria Regina, the haughty daughter,
the ghost-lady herself, as found on the rainy day in the
tower.

"I am so well, so happy, so rich in life and thoughts and
hopes! I owe it all to you, and I thank you again and still
again, and sign my last letter from the Halden with the sweet
salutation of the country, 'Gruess' Gott!'

"Devotedly yours,

"MORRIS DAVIDSON.

"_Midnight, June the first._"

In the same mail Miss Valentine received a letter from her niece and
namesake, who was travelling with friends from Munich to Geneva.

"MY DEAREST AUNT,--I can't possibly go to sleep without
telling you about this beautiful day. Of course you knew we
were going through Zurich, but you did not know we were
going to give ourselves the joy of stopping for a little
glimpse of the Halden country.

"We took a very early train this morning, and without waiting
at the village, went directly