n your fancy, Master Austin, I expect."

"Fancy, indeed!" retorted Austin, excitedly. "You'll tell me next it's
my fancy that I'm looking at you now. A lady in a large hat and a sort
of light-coloured dress. She _must_ be there. There's nowhere else for
her to be, unless the earth has swallowed her up. I'll go and look
myself."

He struggled up and staggered as fast as he could go to the gate. Then
he pushed it open and went out as far as the middle of the road from
which he could see at least a hundred yards each way. But not a living
creature was in sight.

"It's enough to make one's hair stand on end!" he exclaimed, as he
came slowly back. "Where can she have got to? She was here--here, by
the gate--not twenty seconds ago, only a few yards from where I was
sitting. Don't talk to me about fancy; that's sheer nonsense. I saw
her as distinctly as I see you now, and I should know her again
directly if I saw her a year hence. Of all inexplicable things!"

There was no more lying down. He was too much puzzled and excited to
keep still. Up and down he paced, cudgelling his brains in search of
an explanation, wondering what it could all mean, and longing for
another glimpse of the mysterious visitor. For one brief moment he had
had a full, clear view of her face, and in that moment he had been
struck by her unmistakable resemblance to himself.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] A fact. Said in the writer's presence by a young clergyman of the
same breed as the one here described.

Chapter the Eleventh

The repairs to the ceiling in Austin's room were now finished, and it
was with great satisfaction that he resumed possession of his old
quarters. The mysterious events that had befallen him when he slept
there last, some weeks before, recurred very vividly to his mind as he
found himself once more amid the familiar surroundings, and although
he heard no more raps or anything else of an abnormal nature, he felt
that, whatever dangers might threaten him in the future, he would
always be protected by those he thought of as his unseen friends. Aunt
Charlotte, meanwhile, had taken an opportunity of consulting the vicar
as to the orthodoxy of a belief in guardian angels, and the vicar had
reassured her at once by referring her to the Collect for St Michael
and All Angels, in which we are invited to pray that they may succour
and defend us upon earth; so that there really was nothing
superstitious in the conclusion that, as Austin