rew the conversation to the topic of
apparitions, and even to warnings of death. I knew that every family
worthy of the name has its omen: the Oxenhams a white bird, another house
a brass band, whose airy music is poured forth by invisible performers,
and so on. Of course I expected some one to cry, 'Oh, _we've_ got a
hearse with white horses,' for that is the kind of heirloom an ancient
house regards with complacent pride. But nobody offered any remarks on
the local omen, and even when I drew near the topic of _hearses_, one of
the girls, my cousin, merely quoted, 'Speak not like a death's-head, good
Doll' (my name is Adolphus), and asked me to play at lawn-tennis.

In the evening, in the smoking-room, it was no better, nobody had ever
heard of an omen in this particular castle. Nay, when I told my story,
for it came to that at last, they only laughed at me, and said I must
have dreamed it. Of course I expected to be wakened in the night by some
awful apparition, but nothing disturbed me. I never slept better, and
hearses were the last things I thought of during the remainder of my
visit. Months passed, and I had almost forgotten the vision, or dream,
for I began to feel apprehensive that, after all, it _was_ a dream. So
costly and elaborate an apparition as a hearse with white horses and
plumes complete, could never have been got up, regardless of expense, for
one occasion only, and to frighten one undergraduate, yet it was certain
that the hearse was not 'the old family coach.' My entertainers had
undeniably never heard of it in their lives before. Even tradition at
the castle said nothing of a spectral hearse, though the house was
credited with a white lady deprived of her hands, and a luminous boy.

Here the Bachelor of Arts paused, and a shower of chaff began.

"Is that really all?" asked the Girton girl.

"Why, this is the third ghost-story to-night without any ghost in it!"

"I don't remember saying that it _was_ a ghost-story," replied the
Bachelor of Arts; "but I thought a little anecdote of a mere 'warning'
might not be unwelcome."

"But where does the warning come in?" asked the schoolboy.

"That's just what I was arriving at," replied the narrator, "when I was
interrupted with as little ceremony as if I had been Mr. Gladstone in the
middle of a most important speech. I was going to say that, in the
Easter Vacation after my visit to the castle, I went over to Paris with a
friend, a fellow of