dead? Dr. Sly arrived, and he offered ghostly--ah! too
ghostly--consolation. He said he believed in them. His own grandmother
had appeared to his grandfather several times before he married again.
He could not doubt that supernatural agencies were possible, even
frequent.

"Suppose he were to appear to me alone," ejaculated the widow, "I should
die of fright."

The doctor looked particularly arch. "The best way in these cases, my
dear madam," said he, "the best way for unprotected ladies is to get a
husband. I never heard of a first husband's ghost appearing to a woman
and her second husband in my life. In all history there is no account of
one."

"Ah! why should I be afraid of seeing my Bluebeard again?" said the
widow; and the doctor retired quite pleased, for the lady was evidently
thinking of a second husband.

"The captain would be a better protector for me certainly than Mr. Sly,"
thought the lady, with a sigh; "but Mr. Sly will certainly kill himself,
and will the captain be a match for two ghosts? Sly will kill himself;
but ah! the captain won't." And the widow thought with pangs of bitter
mortification of Dolly Coddlins. How--how should these distracting
circumstances be brought to an end?

She retired to rest that night not without a tremor,--to bed, but not to
sleep. At midnight a voice was heard in her room, crying, "Fatima!
Fatima! Fatima!" in awful accents. The doors banged to and fro, the
bells began to ring, the maids went up and down stairs skurrying and
screaming, and gave warning in a body. John Thomas, as pale as death,
declared that he found Bluebeard's yeomanry sword, that hung in the
hall, drawn, and on the ground; and the sticking-plaster miniature in
Mr. Bluebeard's bedroom was found turned topsy-turvy!

"It is some trick," said the obstinate and incredulous Sister Anne.
"To-night I will come and sleep with you, sister." And the night came,
and the two sisters retired together.

'Twas a wild night. The wind howling without went crashing through the
old trees of the old rookery round about the old church. The long
bedroom windows went thump thumping; the moon could be seen through them
lighting up the graves with their ghastly shadows; the yew-tree, cut
into the shape of a bird, looked particularly dreadful, and bent and
swayed as if it would peck something off that other yew-tree which was
of the shape of a dumb-waiter. The bells at midnight began to ring as
usual, the doors clapped, ji