ible struggle. Although I am now
entirely free from any such influences, I cannot help fearfully
wondering at the awful power one being can exert over another. How an
evil man could almost deplete me of my own self, and make me see
according to his will and act according to his desires, is to me beyond
explanation. Truly does our greatest poet say--

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Tom Temple is married, and lives happily at Temple Hall. Tom attributes
all his happiness to the ghost. He should never have had the pluck to
ask Edith Gray to be his wife, he says, had not his lady-love been so
fearful.

"But you found no difficulty in getting her consent, Tom?" I said one
day at Temple Hall.

"Difficulty!" laughed Tom. "She said 'Yes' before I had stuttered out
my little speech."

"I couldn't bear to see you in such an agony of pain," blushingly
replied his happy little wife.

Ah, well, Tom deserves his happiness, because he makes those around him
happy.

Simon Slowden lives with Gertrude and me. He declared that he couldn't
bear the idea of leaving us, after he'd gone through so much to bring us
together. We are not sorry for this, for he has been an incalculable
help to me in many ways. But for him, perhaps, I should never have the
treasure I now possess, the truest and noblest wife God ever gave to
man; but for him, I might have dragged out my weary life, disappointed
and almost broken-hearted. Of course this might not be so; but I know
that Simon was one of my greatest helpers in making me the happiest man
on earth.

I will close my story with a secret. Yesterday, Simon came to me,
looking very grave.

"If I remember aright, yer honour," he said, "I told you as 'ow I'd
completely finished wi' all belongin' to the female persuasion."

"You did, Simon."

"Well, I've changed my mind. I used to think after that waccinatin'
business gived me small-pox, that I was done for; but that 'ere Emily
the 'ousemaid 'ev bin waccinated, and she 'ev had small-pox too. Well,
't seems to me as 'ow it must hev bin special Providence as hev brought
us together, as we read in the Book of Job; and not likin' to go 'gin
Providence, I axed her to change her name to Slowden."

"Well, Simon, what was her reply?"

"She seed the force o' my reasonin's in a minute, and so, as you may
say, 'there'll be good brought out o' evil,' even the evil o'
waccinatin'; for it