notice, appearing either not to perceive or to be indifferent to his presence. The priest had fallen again to monotonous prayer, only raising his voice at intervals to recite the versicle, "Subvenite Sancti Dei, occurrite Angeli Domini," and Santal found himself repeating with the rest the antiphon-"Suscipientes animam ejus." Among the murmur of deep voices he could distinguish the thin tones of the little surgeon-barber. He held Cecilia's hand in his and felt it deathly cold, and as their heads bent together over the desk, he whispered to her, telling her that he was resolved to ask the priest to marry them that night, and asking her consent. She did not answer, and he urged upon her the expediency of such a step; saying that he dared not leave her even for a day unprotected, and repeating the phrase of the surgeon-barber, that "they were living in troublous times," though he did not know the meaning of it. She said nothing, nor did she look at him, but he felt the grasp of her hand tighten, and knew that he had her consent.

The most solemn part of the service was approaching; an altar ministrant rung a silver bell, and the black-robed worshippers sunk their heads still lower at the elevation of the Host. Strangely moved, Santal bowed his head with the rest, and for a moment in the wave of devotion which swept over the whole congregation all sense of present things was lost.

When he looked up again he saw that daybreak was near at hand, for the great window over the altar was growing light with a pale radiance. The flame of the candles burnt fainter and yellower, and the figure of the priest and the crucifix before which he stood grew darker against the brightening sky. Though the windows were shut, Santal fancied he could feel the cooler breath of morning mingling with the heavy incense-laden air of the chapel, and there was a little sprig

of ivy projecting across a side pane, which by its constant tapping against the glass showed that a breeze was moving outside.

The mass was ended, the priest slowly turned and raised his hand in the parting benediction, yet none of the congregation stirred; it seemed as though they were expecting something more to come.

Santal rose from his knees, and taking Cecilia by the hand led her up the aisle to the altar steps. "Father," he said, addressing the priest, "this noble lady and I desire that you will join us in marriage before these honorable gentlemen and before the world." The priest showed no sign of surprise at the request, but only motioned to them to kneel at the altar-rail. No voice was raised among those present, and no one moved except the ill-favored cousin, who left his place and drew a little nearer. The pair knelt together, but Santal's thought was so bewildered that he scarcely took notice of the service that the priest had begun to read, until he heard the question "Wilt thou take Cecilia here present for thy lawful wife according to the rites of our Holy Mother, the Church?" He answered, "I will," and his bride making a like response, the service went on. In a few moments the priest joined their hands, and Santal repeated slowly after him-"I, Anthony, take thee, Cecilia, to be my wedded wife if Holy Church will it permit, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, and thereto I plight thee my troth."

The priest instructed him in a low voice that he must put into his bride's hand a piece of gold and of silver, and on her finger a ring. He took from his purse a guinea and a shilling, and placed them in the white hand stretched towards him; and for a ring he drew from his third finger the gold ring with the Bejant Arms that he had

his exposure had affected him strangely, and he felt that sickness and extreme prostration which generally accompanies the return of consciousness after the administration of a powerful anaesthetic. For some hours he lay in a semi-stupor, and his state was such that his servant considered it advisable to seek medical advice. The village practitioner, who was shortly in attendance, bled him and prescribed a febrifuge. He inquired of the servant the particulars of his master's attack, and being informed of what had happened, said that the exposure could not account for such a condition and that Mr. Santal had undoubtedly been drugged. He put some searching questions in an attempt to discover how any drug could have been administered; but his patient ridiculed the idea, saying that his time was fully accounted for up to his being knocked down by the horse in its efforts to break loose; and that his present seizure must be attributed to a violent fall and subsequent exposure in a semi-stunned condition. The doctor, however, would not abandon his position, and remarked drily to the landlord that boys would be boys; hinting that Mr. Santal had fallen among bad company on the way; and professing to be able to diagnose from certain symptoms that the drug had been administered in the medium of wine.

The young man's vigorous constitution soon rallied, and, though he kept his bed the next day, his head was clear and he was able to listen with interest to the account given him by his servant and the landlord of their search for him. The delay in his arrival had not at first aroused their anxiety, as they concluded that he had taken shelter somewhere from the storm; but when twelve o'clock struck, and still nothing was seen of him, they began to think that some misadventure had occurred. It was shortly after midnight that the sound of hoofs called them to the door of the

inn, where they came upon a riderless horse with a rein broken, and the sad dle turned upside down. The servant at once recognized his master's horse, and a fresh cause for alarm was found in the dripping saddle, and the state of the animal, which showed that it had been in the water. The landlord concluded at once that Mr. Santal had chosen the by-road from Laffontine instead of the highway, and had been carried away in attempting to cross the flooded stream. They proceeded to the ford with lanterns, and the subsidence of the water allowing them to cross soon after daybreak, they found hoof marks on the sodden turf, which showed where the horse had turned off across the meadow on the previous night. Guided by these tracks, they reached the porch of a ruined house, well known in the neighborhood as Bejant Place, and entering, came first upon a riding cloak on a heap of fallen timbers in the dismantled hall; and shortly afterwards found Mr. Santal himself lying prostrate on the altar-steps of a chapel attached to the house. The landlord said that the family of Bejant were formerly lords of Winterbourne Manor, and had built Bejant Place in the reign of Elizabeth; but their waning fortunes had forced them to abandon their residence shortly after the close of the Civil Wars, and it was now little more than a ruined shell. The inn where Santal lay was called after them, the Bejant Arms, and their shield, with the wavy bars of silver and black, could be seen swinging on the signboard from his bedroom window.

Santal was thus enabled to trace the origin of some of the fancies which had filled his dream; but he was left to wonder at the coincidence of his having purchased in Oxford a ring which had undoubtedly belonged to some member of that family in whose house he was destined to pass so strange a night.

The dream had left so vivid an im

pression that he could not easily shake it off, and more than one circumstance contributed to intensify the idea of reality that it had produced on his imagination. He missed from his finger the ring itself, and remembered with a smile, and yet with sadness, the important part it had played in his vision. He had little doubt that he had in sleep actually removed it from his hand, and that it would be found somewhere in the chapel; and he was scarcely surprised that a guinea and a shilling should be missing from his purse.

His indisposition caused Santal to modify his plans; and instead of proceeding directly on his journey he retained his rooms at the Bejant Arms, and remained nearly a week at Winterbourne. After he was sufficiently recovered to leave the house he several times visited the ruins of Bejant Place. The stream was now sunk to a mere brook, and might have been crossed even without the aid of the steppingstones which bridged it. From the further bank a broad expanse of undulating greensward, dotted here and there with old elms, led up to the house. This stretch of turf had once formed the pleasure park of Bejant Place; and as The Park it was still known, though the fences had long ago been removed, and it was now used as a common pasture by the villagers. Santal found that the house, when viewed in the less romantic hues of daylight, was indeed, as his landlord had told him, little better than a ruin. It had been entirely dismantled at some comparatively remote period, the staircases throughout and the floors in part had been removed, and the rooms stripped of their panelling and even of their fireplaces. He entered by the projecting stone porch, and found no difficulty in retracing his steps or in identifying the various chambers which he had actually visited; but he wondered as he remembered the fantastic properties and persons with which his imagination

had equipped them. The walls from which the panelling and plaster had been stripped, the cracked and broken stuccoes of the ceiling, the gaping holes whence the fireplaces had been removed, and the cobwebbed or shivered casements combined to produce a scene of desolation which reached its culmination in the chapel.

Here the collapse of the roof had left a few scarred and jagged rafters projecting from the walls in perilous and threatening positions, while the tiles and beams had in their fall shattered the flagging of the floor below and littered it with débris. A wreck of mullions and tracery still remained in the east window and Santal saw waving in the wind outside the same sprig of ivy that he had noticed in his dream. There was no trace of seats or any other fittings, but at the east end the rising steps marked the position which the altar had once occupied. He examined the place carefully in the expectation of finding his ring and the money that he had lost, but his search was unsuccessful.

Besides the ruins of Bejant Place, Santal visited with much interest the parish church of Winterbourne, which lay facing the inn at the opposite side of the village green. On the south side of the church was a chantry built by some of the old lords of the manor, and known as the Bejant Aisle. It was separated from the rest of the church by oak screen-work, and in it were many monuments of the family. Among these memorials was a raised altar-tomb of elaborate workmanship, on which lay a full-length alabaster figure of a man clothed in a fantastic plate-armor prevalent at the close of the sixteenth century. Round the edge of the tomb ran an inscription in brass showing that the figure represented one Roger Bejant who "was interred 24th of June, 1580."

The name, and still more the day of his burial, arrested Santal's attention, but his surprise was increased a hundredfold by the discovery of a plain

tablet of brass let into the wall hard by, which recorded the death, in the same year, of "Cecelia, onely child to Roger Bejant, Esq., aged 18," with a rhyming inscription

Stay, passenger, and solace with a tear Th' unhappy child that here lies buried near,

Who when shee saw that cruel fate laid low

The onely succor she on earth did knowe, Droop't down and in the tombe with him was laid

A faultlesse daughter and a spotlesse maid.

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The coincidence of these names with those which his dreaming imagination had conjured up, was so startling as to lead him for a moment to doubt his reason, and to consider whether he had not on that night in the old manor-house been permitted to rehearsed by ghostly actors a scene which had actually occurred more than two centuries before. He dismissed the idea as absurd almost before it was formed, and was constrained eventually to believe that he must in some archaeological work have once read a description of these monuments. The knowledge that the inn at which he hoped to pass the night was called the Bejant Arms had very possibly revived his dormant recollection of such a description, and led him to attach the names of persons who had once existed to the phantoms of his dream. It was a lame and unsatisfactory explanation, but he could conceive no better, and though he taxed his memory to the utmost to recall the fact of his having ever read anything of the kind, it was without success. Neither could he determine at what precise point his dream had begun, but it seemed probable that he had never properly recovered consciousness after being knocked down by his horse, and had entered the house and wandered from room to room in a half-stunned condition.