rds, and began to sing a
little Florentine street-song, which was always a great favorite of
mine. It is a sweet, piteous little song; and it bewitched me then as
much as it did the very first time I had heard some boys sing it, as
they went under our windows at night, when I was first in Florence
years ago.

He said no more about the ghost; but later that night, when I happened
to wake, I wondered if the poor man was keeping his anxious watch, and
listening in a strange house to hear the hours struck one by one. He
went away soon after breakfast; and, though he promised to come in
again to say good-by, that was the last we saw of him, and we did not
see his name on the steamer list either, so we were much puzzled, and
we talked about him a great deal, and told George Sheffield the story,
which he wished he had heard himself.

"Of course it is a hallucination," said Jack: "they are by no means
uncommon. I can read you accounts of any number of such cases. There
is a good deal about them in Griesinger's book,--the chapter called
'Elementary Disorders in Mental Disease,' Helen, if you care to look
at it, or any of those books on insanity. Didn't you have Dr. Elam's
'A Physician's Problems' a while ago? He has an essay there which is
very good."

"I was reading his essay on 'Moral and Criminal Epidemics,'" said I,
"that was all. It's a cheerful thing too!"

"Isn't there such a thing as these visions coming before slight
attacks of epilepsy?" said George. And my brother said yes; but
Mr. Whiston had nothing of that kind, he had taken pains to find out.
There was no hope of a cure, he feared; he was not wise in such cases.
But the trouble had gone too far, there were bad symptoms, and he
confesses he has hurt himself with opium during the last year or two.
"He will not live long at any rate," said Jack; "and I think the
sooner the end comes the better. He has a predisposition to mental
disease, and he was always a frail, curious make-up. But I don't
know--'There are more things in heaven and earth,' George Sheffield;
and I wish you had heard him tell his story."

And we talked over some strange, unaccountable things; and each told
stories which could neither be doubted nor explained. I had been
readier to believe in such things since I was warned myself before the
greatest sorrow I had ever known. I was by the sea; and one of my
friends and I were walking slowly toward home one dark and windy
evening, when suddenly we