of that myself. My father before me was impertinent, and his last
dying words to me were, 'Tom, I lay it as a last injunction upon you
to keep up the principles of our family, and always to show nothing but
impertinence to those who don't deserve respect.'"

With a face scarlet from indignation she immediately ordered her
carriage home, but before it had arrived there the intelligence from
another source had reached the family, together with the fact that the
Banshee had been heard by Mr. Goodwin's servants under Miss Alice's
window. Such, indeed, was the fact; and the report of the circumstance
had spread through half the parish before the hour of noon next day.

The removal of Alice sank heavily upon the heart of Harry Woodward; it
seemed to him as if she had gone out of his grasp, and from under the
influence of his eye, for, by whatever means he might accomplish it,
he was resolved to keep the deadly power of that eye upon her. He had
calculated upon the voice and prophetic wail of the Banshee as
being fatal in her then state of health; or was it this ominous and
supernatural foreboding of her dissolution that caused them to fly from
the place? He reasoned, as the reader may perceive, upon the principle
of the Banshee being, according to the superstitious notions entertained
of her, a real supernatural visitant, and not the unscrupulous and
diabolical imitation of her by Catherine Collins. Still he thought it
barely possible that the change of air and the waters of the celebrated
spring might recover her, notwithstanding all his inhuman anticipations.
His brother, also, according to the surgeon's last report, afforded
hopes of convalescence. A kind of terror came over him that his plans
might fail, because he felt almost certain that if Alice and his brother
both recovered, Mr. Lindsay might, or rather would, mount his old hobby,
and insist on having them married, in the teeth of all opposition on
the part of either himself or his mother. This was a gloomy prospect for
him, and one which he could not contemplate without falling back upon
still darker schemes.

After the night on which Barney Casey had seen him and the Black Spectre
together we need scarcely say that he watched Barney closely, nor that
Barney watched him with as keen a vigilance. Whatever Woodward may have
actually felt upon the subject of the apparition, Barney was certainly
undecided as to its reality; or if there existed any bias at all, it was