tterfly or moth.
The superstition that spirits take this shape is not unknown in the
West; and I suppose that as he steered his train out of the station,
this fancy, by some odd freak of memory, leaped into his brain, and
held it, hour after hour, while he and his engine flew forward and
the burning theatre fell further and further behind. The truth was
known a fortnight after his return from prison, which happened about
the time of barley harvest.

A harvest-thanksgiving was held in the parish where he lived; and he
went to it, being always a religious man. There were sheaves and
baskets of vegetables in the chancel; fruit and flowers on the
communion-table, with twenty-one tall candles burning above them; a
processional hymn; and a long sermon. During the sermon, as the
weather was hot and close, someone opened the door at the west end.

And when the preacher was just making up his mind to close the
discourse, a large white moth fluttered in at the west door.

There was much light throughout the church; but the great blaze came,
of course, from the twenty-one candles upon the altar. And towards
this the moth slowly drifted, as if the candles sucked her nearer and
nearer, up between the pillars of the nave, on a level with their
capitals. Few of the congregation noticed her, for the sermon was a
stirring one; only one or two children, perhaps, were interested--and
the man I write of. He saw her pass over his head and float up into
the chancel. He half-rose from his chair.

"My brothers," said the preacher, "if two sparrows, that are sold for
a farthing, are not too little for the care of this infinite
Providence--"

A scream rang out and drowned the sentence. It was followed by a
torrent of vile words, shouted by a man who had seen, now for the
second time, the form that clothed his wife's soul shrivelled in
unthinking flames. All that was left of the white moth lay on the
altar-cloth, among the fruit at the base of the tallest candlestick.

And because the man saw nothing but cruelty in the Providence of
which the preacher spoke, he screamed and cursed, till they
overpowered him and took him forth by the door. He was wholly mad
from that hour.

THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE.

Few rivers in England are without their "Lovers' Leap"; but the
tradition of this one is singular, I believe. It overhangs a dark
pool, midway down a west country valley--a sheer escarpment of
granite, its lip lying but a st