me. The sense of my own indecision irritated my nerves. After a long look at the lake, through the trees, I came to a positive conclusion at last. I determined to try if a good swimmer could drown himself.

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CHAPTER XVI.

A VISION OF THE NIGHT.

RETURNING to the cottage parlour, I took a chair by the window, and opened my pocket-book at a blank page. I had certain directions to give to my representatives, which might spare them some trouble and uncertainty in the event of my death. Disguising my last instructions, under the commonplace heading of Memoranda on my return to London,' I began to write.

6

I had filled one page of the pocket-book, and had just turned to the next-when I became conscious of a difficulty in fixing my attention on the subject that was before it. I was at once reminded of the similar difficulty which I felt, in Shetland, when I had

tried vainly to arrange the composition of the letter to my mother which Miss Dunross was to write. By way of completing the parallel my thoughts wandered now, as they had wandered then, to my latest remembrances of Mrs. Van Brandt. In a minute or two I began to feel once more the strange physical sensations which I had first experienced in the garden at Mr. Dunross's house. The same mysterious trembling shuddered through me from head to foot. I looked about me again, with no distinct consciousness of what the objects were on which my eyes rested. My nerves trembled, on that lovely summer night, as if there had been an electric disturbance in the atmosphere, and a storm coming. I laid my pocket-book and pencil on the table, and rose to go out again under the trees. Even the trifling effort to cross the room proved to be an effort that was beyond my power. I stood rooted to the

spot, with my face turned towards the moon

light streaming in at the

open door.

An interval passed; and, as I still looked out through the door, I became aware of something moving, far down among the trees that fringed the shore of the lake. The first impression produced on me was of two grey shadows winding their way slowly towards me between the trunks of the trees. By fine degrees, the shadows assumed a more and more marked outline, until they presented themselves in the likeness of two robed figures, one taller than the other. While they glided nearer and nearer, their grey obscurity of hue melted away. They brightened softly with an inner light of their own, as they approached the open space before the door. For the third time, I stood in the ghostly Presence of Mrs. Van Brandt-and with her, holding her hand, I beheld a second

apparition never before revealed to me, the apparition of her child.

Hand in hand, shining in their unearthly brightness through the bright moonlight itself, the two stood before me. The mother's face looked at me once more with the sorrowful and pleading eyes which I remembered so well. But the face of the child was innocently radiant with an angelic smile. I waited, in unutterable expectation, for the word that was to be spoken, for the movement that was to come. The movement came first. The child released its hold on the mother's hand; and, floating slowly upward, remained poised in mid air-a softly-glowing Presence, shining out of the dark background of the trees. The mother glided into the room, and stopped at the table on which I had laid my pocket-book and pencil, when I could no longer write. As before, she took the pencil, and wrote on the blank page. As before,