visited the village of Ballyreina again,
and in one way and another he found out a few particulars. The house,
you remember, had been let to us by a Captain Marchmont. He, my brother
discovered, was not the owner of the place, as we had naturally imagined,
but only rented it on a very long lease from some ladies of the name of
Fitzgerald. It had been in Captain Marchmont's possession for a great
many years at the time he let it to us, and the Fitzgeralds, never
returning there even to visit it, had come to be almost forgotten. The
room with the old-fashioned furniture had been reserved by the owners
of the place to leave some of their poor old treasures in--relics too
cumbersome to be carried about with them in their strange wanderings,
but too precious, evidently, to be parted with. We, of course, never
could know what may not have been hidden away in some of the queer
old bureaux I told you of. Family papers of importance, perhaps;
possibly some ancient love-letters, forgotten in the confusion of their
leave-taking; a lock of hair, or a withered flower, perhaps, that she,
my poor old lady, would fain have clasped in her hand when dying, or
have had buried with her. Ah, yes; there must be many a pitiful old
story that is never told."

Lady Farquhar stopped and gazed dreamily and half sadly into the fire.

"Then Miss Fitzgerald _was_ dead when you were at Ballyreina?" I asked.

Margaret looked up with some surprise.

"Did I not say so?" she exclaimed. "That was the point of most interest
in what my brother discovered. He could not hear the exact date of her
death, but he learnt with certainty that she was dead--had died, at
Geneva I think, some time in the month of March in the previous year;
_the same month, March '55, in which I had twice seen the apparition at
Ballyreina._"

This was my friend's ghost story.

II

WITNESSED BY TWO

"But to-morrow--to-morrow you will keep for me. I may expect you at the
usual time?" said young Mrs. Medway to her old friend Major Graham, as
she shook hands with him.

"To-morrow? Certainly. I _have_ kept it for you, Anne. I always said I
should," he answered. There was a slight touch of reproach in his tone.

She lifted her eyes for half a second to his face as if she would have
said more. But after all it was only the words, "Good-bye, then, till
to-morrow," that were uttered, quietly and almost coldly, as Major
Graham left the room.

"I can't quite make Anne out