moment for my own peace I became his wife. In a few years his
conduct fully justified my demand for a separation, and I fondly hoped
to escape the fatal prophecy. Under the delusion that I had passed my
forty-seventh birthday, I was prevailed upon to believe in his
amendment, and to pardon him. I have, however, heard from undoubted
authority that I am only forty-seven this day, and I know that I am
about to die. I die, however, without the dread of death, fortified
as I am by the sacred precepts of Christianity and upheld by its
promises. When I am gone, I wish that you, my children, should unbind
this black ribbon and alone behold my wrist before I am consigned to
the grave.'

"She then requested to be left that she might lie down and compose
herself, and her children quitted the apartment, having desired her
attendant to watch her, and if any change came on to summon them to
her bedside. In an hour the bell rang, and they hastened to the call,
but all was over. The two children having ordered every one to
retire, knelt down by the side of the bed, when Lady Riverston unbound
the black ribbon and found the wrist exactly as Lady Beresford had
described it--every nerve withered, every sinew shrunk.

"Her friend, the Archbishop, had had her buried in the Cathedral of
St. Patrick, in Dublin, in the Earl of Cork's tomb, where she now
lies."

* * * * *

The writer now professes his disbelief in any spiritual presence, and
explains his theory that Lady Beresford's anxiety about Lord Tyrone
deluded her by a vivid dream, during which she hurt her wrist.

Of all ghost stories the Tyrone, or Beresford Ghost, has most
variants. Following Monsieur Haureau, in the Journal des Savants, I
have tracked the tale, the death compact, and the wound inflicted by
the ghost on the hand, or wrist, or brow, of the seer, through Henry
More, and Melanchthon, and a mediaeval sermon by Eudes de Shirton, to
William of Malmesbury, a range of 700 years. Mrs. Grant of Laggan has
a rather recent case, and I have heard of another in the last ten
years! Calmet has a case in 1625, the spectre leaves

The sable score of fingers four

on a board of wood.

Now for a modern instance of a gang of ghosts with a purpose!

When I narrated the story which follows to an eminent moral
philosopher, he remarked, at a given point, "Oh, the ghost _spoke_,
did she?" and displayed scepticism. The evidence, however, left him,
as it leaves me, at a st