was as follows: "I wished you to utter what was in your mind.
You obeyed. I have therefore established power over you. For three
months from this day you can communicate to no living man what has
passed between us--you cannot even show this note to the friend by your
side. During three months, silence complete as to me and mine. Do you
doubt my power to lay on you this command?--try to disobey me. At the
end of the third month, the spell is raised. For the rest I spare you. I
shall visit your grave a year and a day after it has received you."

So ends this strange story, which I ask no one to believe. I write it
down exactly three months after I received the above note. I could not
write it before, nor could I show to G----, in spite of his urgent
request, the note which I read under the gas-lamp by his side.

VII

THE BOTATHEN GHOST

By the Rev. S.R. HAWKER

The legend of Parson Rudall and the Botathen Ghost will be recognised by
many Cornish people as a local remembrance of their boyhood.

It appears from the diary of this learned master of the
grammar-school--for such was his office, as well as perpetual curate of
the parish,--"that a pestilential disease did break forth in our town in
the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise
invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief
scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign
influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir
of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of
age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial
motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach his funeral sermon."
It should be remembered here that, howsoever strange and singular it may
sound to us that a mere lad should formally solicit such a performance
at the hands of his master, it was in consonance with the habitual usage
of those times. The old services for the dead had been abolished by law,
and in the stead of sacrament and ceremony, month's mind and year's
mind, the sole substitute which survived was the general desire "to
partake," as they called it, of a posthumous discourse, replete with
lofty eulogy and flattering remembrance of the living and the dead. The
diary proceeds:

"I fulfilled my undertaking and preached over the coffin in the presence
of a full assemblage of mourners and lachrymose friends. An ancient
gentleman who was then and there in t