it for the reception of its mistress. He confessed that he
had contrived his hiding-place for his nefarious purposes, and had
borrowed an eye from the portrait by way of a reconnoitering hole."

"And what did they do with him--did they hang him?" resumed the
questioner.

"Hang him?--how could they?" exclaimed a beetle-browed barrister, with
a hawk's nose--"the offence was not capital--no robbery nor assault had
been committed--no forcible entry or breaking into the premises--"

"My aunt," said the narrator, "was a woman of spirit, and apt to take
the law into her own hands. She had her own notions of cleanliness
also. She ordered the fellow to be drawn through the horsepond to
cleanse away all offences, and then to be well rubbed down with an
oaken towel."

"And what became of him afterwards?" said the inquisitive gentleman.

"I do not exactly know--I believe he was sent on a voyage of
improvement to Botany Bay."

"And your aunt--" said the inquisitive gentleman--"I'll warrant she
took care to make her maid sleep in the room with her after that."

"No, sir, she did better--she gave her hand shortly after to the
roystering squire; for she used to observe it was a dismal thing for a
woman to sleep alone in the country."

"She was right," observed the inquisitive gentleman, nodding his head
sagaciously--"but I am sorry they did not hang that fellow."

It was agreed on all hands that the last narrator had brought his tale
to the most satisfactory conclusion; though a country clergyman present
regretted that the uncle and aunt, who figured in the different
stories, had not been married together. They certainly would have been
well matched.

"But I don't see, after all," said the inquisitive gentleman, "that
there was any ghost in this last story."

"Oh, if it's ghosts you want, honey," cried the Irish captain of
dragoons, "if it's ghosts you want, you shall have a whole regiment of
them. And since these gentlemen have been giving the adventures of
their uncles and aunts, faith and I'll e'en give you a chapter too, out
of my own family history."

THE BOLD DRAGOON;

OR THE ADVENTURE OF MY GRANDFATHER.

My grandfather was a bold dragoon, for it's a profession, d'ye see,
that has run in the family. All my forefathers have been dragoons and
died upon the field of honor except myself, and I hope my posterity may
be able to say the same; however, I don't mean to be vainglorious.
Well, my grandfather, as I