ious old place this Quebec is, Mr. March! I'll tell you
what: it's my opinion that this is an enchanted castle, and if my ribs
are not walked over by a muleteer in the course of the night, it's all I
ask."

In this and other discourse recalling the famous adventure of Don
Quixote, the Colonel beguiled the labor of disrobing, and had got as far
as his boots, when there came a startling knock at the door. With one
boot in his hand and the other on his foot, the Colonel limped forward.
"I suppose it's that clerk has sent to say he's made some other
mistake," and he flung wide the door, and then stood motionless before
it, dumbly staring at a figure on the threshold,--a figure with the
fringed forehead and pale blue eyes of her whom they had so lately
turned out of that room.

Shrinking behind the side of the doorway, "Excuse me, gentlemen," she
said, with a dignity that recalled their scattered senses, "but will
you 'ave the goodness to look if my beads are on your table--O thanks,
thanks, thanks!" she continued, showing her face and one hand, as Basil
blushingly advanced with a string of heavy black beads, piously adorned
with a large cross. "I'm sure, I'm greatly obliged to you, gentlemen,
and I hask a thousand pardons for troublin' you," she concluded in a
somewhat severe tone, that left them abashed and culpable; and vanished
as mysteriously as she had appeared.

"Now, see here," said the Colonel, with a huge sigh as he closed the
door again, and this time locked it, "I should like to know how long
this sort of thing is to be kept up? Because, if it's to be regularly
repeated during the night, I'm going to dress again." Nevertheless, he
finished undressing and got into bed, where he remained for some time
silent. Basil put out the light. "O, I'm sorry you did that, my dear
fellow," said the Colonel; "but never mind, it was an idle curiosity, no
doubt. It's my belief that in the landlord's extremity of bedlinen, I've
been put to sleep between a pair of tablecloths; and I thought I'd like
to look. It seems to me that I make out a checkered pattern on top and
a flowered or arabesque pattern underneath. I wish they had given me
mates. It 's pretty hard having to sleep between odd tablecloths. I
shall complain to the landlord of this in the morning. I've never had to
sleep between odd table-cloths at any hotel before."

The Colonel's voice seemed scarcely to have died away upon Basil's
drowsy ear, when suddenly the soun