ing the box with me."

"You have it, then?"

"To be sure I have, an' my father an' Nelly is both huntin' the house
for it."

"Why, what could your father want with it?"

"How can I tell?--an' only that I promised it to you, I wouldn't fetch
it at all?"

"I thought you had given it up for lost; how did you get it again?"

"That's nothing to you, an' don't trouble your head about it. There it
is now, an' I have kept my word; for while I live, I'll never break it
if I can. Dear me, how bright that flash was!"

As Hanlon was taking the box out of her hand, a fearful flash of sheeted
lightning opened out of a cloud almost immediately above them, and
discovered it so plainly, that the letters P. M. were distinctly legible
on the lid of it, and nearly at the same moment a deep groan was heard,
as if coming-out of the rock.

"Father of Heaven!" exclaimed Hanlon, "do you hear that?"

"Yes," she replied, "I did hear a groan; but here, do you go--oh, it
would be useless to ask you--so I must only do it myself; stand here an'
I'll go round the rock; at any rate let us be sure that it is a ghost."

"Don't, Sarah," he exclaimed, seizing her arm; "for God's sake,
don't--it is a spirit--I know it--don't lave me. I understand it all,
an' maybe you will some day, too."

"Now," she exclaimed indignantly, and in an incredulous voice; "in God's
name, what has a spirit to do with an old rusty Tobaccy-box? It's surely
a curious box; there's my father would give one of his eyes to find it;
an' Nelly, that hid it the other day, found it gone when she went to get
it for him."

"Do you toll me so?" said Hanlon, placing it as he spoke in his safest
pocket.

"I do," she replied; "an' only that I promised it to you, and would not
break my word, I'd give it to my father; but I don't see myself what use
it can be of to him or anybody."

Hanlon, despite of his terrors, heard this intelligence with the deepest
interest--indeed, with an interest so deep, that he almost forgot them
altogether; and with a view of eliciting from her as much information in
connection with it as he could, he asked her to accompany him a part of
the way home.

"It's not quite the thing," she replied, "for a girl like me to be
walkin' with a young fellow at this hour; but as I'm not afeard of you,
and as I know you are afeard of the ghost--if there is a ghost--I will
go part of the way with you, although it does not say much for your
courage to ask me."

"