age was interrupted, of course. But against the opinion of
more thinking men, who considered Sir Philip Forester as having thrown
himself out of the rank of men of honour, Captain Falconer admitted
him to the privilege of such, accepted a challenge from him, and in
the rencounter received a mortal wound. Such are the ways of Heaven,
mysterious in our eyes. Lady Forester never recovered the shock of this
dismal intelligence.

"And did this tragedy," said I, "take place exactly at the time when the
scene in the mirror was exhibited?"

"It is hard to be obliged to maim one's story," answered my aunt, "but
to speak the truth, it happened some days sooner than the apparition was
exhibited."

"And so there remained a possibility," said I, "that by some secret and
speedy communication the artist might have received early intelligence
of that incident."

"The incredulous pretended so," replied my aunt.

"What became of the adept?" demanded I.

"Why, a warrant came down shortly afterwards to arrest him for high
treason, as an agent of the Chevalier St. George; and Lady Bothwell,
recollecting the hints which had escaped the doctor, an ardent friend
of the Protestant succession, did then call to remembrance that this
man was chiefly PRONE among the ancient matrons of her own political
persuasion. It certainly seemed probable that intelligence from the
Continent, which could easily have been transmitted by an active and
powerful agent, might have enabled him to prepare such a scene of
phantasmagoria as she had herself witnessed. Yet there were so many
difficulties in assigning a natural explanation, that, to the day of her
death, she remained in great doubt on the subject, and much disposed to
cut the Gordian knot by admitting the existence of supernatural agency."

"But, my dear aunt," said I, "what became of the man of skill?"

"Oh, he was too good a fortune-teller not to be able to foresee that his
own destiny would be tragical if he waited the arrival of the man with
the silver greyhound upon his sleeve. He made, as we say, a moonlight
flitting, and was nowhere to be seen or heard of. Some noise there was
about papers or letters found in the house; but it died away, and Doctor
Baptista Damiotti was soon as little talked of as Galen or Hippocrates."

"And Sir Philip Forester," said I, "did he too vanish for ever from the
public scene?"

"No," replied my kind informer. "He was heard of once more, and it was
upon a r