there were
footsteps on the stairs.

"Dorothy! Dorothy!" I screamed. Dorothy, startled from her sleep,
came rushing to the entry in her night-dress.

[Illustration: THE FRIGHTENED IRISHMAN.]

"I have seen a ghost, Dorothy," said I.

"A what?"

"I have seen the awfullest--"

"It's comin'," said grandfather.

"Holy Peter!" said an object in the darkness. "There's a dead man in
the bed!"

"Why, it's that Irishman," said Dorothy, as she heard the voice.

"What Irishman?" asked I. "A murdered one?"

"No; he--there--I suspect that he mistook his room and went to bed
with poor Jemmy."

The mystery now became quite clear. Grandfather looked anything but
pleased, and declared that he would rather have seen a ghost than to
have been so foolishly frightened.

"Is that all?" asked Charlie.

"That is all," said Grandmother Golden. "Just hear the crickets chirp.
Sounds dreadful mournful."

"I have been twice disappointed," said Charlie. "Perhaps, Master
Lewis, you can tell us a story before we go in. Something fine and
historic."

"In harmony with books you are reading?"

"And the spirit of Nature," added Charlie.

"How fine that there boy talks," said Grandmother Golden. "Get to be a
minister some day, I reckon."

"How would the _True_ Story of Macbeth answer?" asked Master Lewis.

"That would be excellent: Shakspeare. The greatest ghost story ever
written."

"And if you don't mind, I'll just wait and hear that story, too," said
good-humored Grandmother Golden.

MASTER LEWIS'S STORY OF MACBETH.

More than eight hundred years ago, when the Roman wall divided
England from Scotland, when the Scots and Picts had become one
people, and when the countries of Northern Europe were disquieted by
the ships of the Danes, there was a king of the Scots, named Duncan.
He was a very old man, and long, long after he was dead, certain
writers discovered that he was a very good man. He had two sons,
named Malcolm and Donaldbain.

Now, when Duncan was enfeebled by years, a great fleet of Danes,
under the command of Suene, King of Denmark and Norway, landed an
army on the Scottish coast. Duncan was unable to take the field
against the invaders in person, and his sons were too young for such
a trust. He had a kinsman, who had proved himself a brave soldier,
named Macbeth. He placed this kinsman at the head of his troops; and
certain writers, long, long