IT is bad enough to wake up in the night-time with that strange consciousness that there is some one in the room, and find that the cat is prowling about; but it is infinitely worse to awake to the sudden realization that some freak of fortune has donated to you an ancestral ghost whose duty it is to continually haunt you! Yet this latter experience was one which Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale suffered.

       Now ancestral ghosts are common enough, heaven knows! There's hardly an ancient family in Britain without its spectre, vouched for by fact and fiction; but the air of America or the subtle influence of Republican principles has been generally supposed to be obnoxious to these appendages of aristocracy. Nevertheless Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale found himself most unexpectedly possessed of one.

       It was the hour just before dawn — the hour when night seems to condense all her shadows into deeper darkness — the hour when sick men, foredoomed to die, yield to the inexorable conqueror — in other words, it was about four o'clock A. M. when S. Bloomingdale awoke from his slumbers and perceived something moving about his room. He sat up in bed and tried to make out what the object was. It appeared to be a luminous, semi-transparent shape, exceedingly indefinite in its outlines and quite indistinct in its corporeal constituents. It was evidently making a careful and critical examination of the room; and for some minutes Spuytenduyvil watched it curiously. Then he spoke up and said:

       "Hallo there! what are you doing here?"

       The figure turned and approached the bed.

       "I'm your ancestral ghost," it remarked calmly. "I've just arrived from across the 'pond' — I believe that's what you Americans say, isn't it?"

       To say that Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale was astonished would be a mild description of his sensations. The last thing in the world which he had dreamed of possessing was an ancestral ghost. He had not even inherited ancestors — that he knew of; for he had been found, when but a few days old, in a basket on the doorsteps of the house of a prominent citizen, and had spent his early years as an inmate of a foundling asylum, where, indeed, he had received his aristocratic and euphonious name. His amazement, therefore, was too intense for utterance; and as a natural consequence he remained silent.

       "Yes," resumed the ghost, after the lapse of a few seconds, — "yes, your father died last week about this time, and I took passage over by the White Star Line."

       "Ah, did you have a pleasant voyage?" asked Spuytenduyvil, so thoroughly surprised that he was unconscious of the absurdity of his remark until his ears heard it.

       "Quite, thanks. We had the Percy and Castlewood spectres on board. In fact we got along so well that when the steamer arrived last evening we agreed to see the city together. I should have been here before if it hadn't been for that."

       "Well, what do you want, anyhow?" said Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale, gathering his wits together.

       "Oh, nothing in particular," the wraith answered. "I've got to stay with you until you die, you know."

       "I'll give you five seconds to get out of the room," said Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale, his anger rising.

       "Pooh," said the ghost, "what's the use of getting mad about it? You can't help it — neither can I, more's the pity. Do you suppose I'd stay in this blasted country if I could get away? Go to sleep. Go to sleep. You'll get used to me after a day or two."

       Spuytenduyvil's first impulse was to arise and forcibly eject his nocturnal visitor, but a few moments of calmer reflection convinced him of the futility of such a proceeding. To accept the ghost's advice seemed after all to be the best thing under the circumstances; and so he laid his head down on the pillow and fell asleep.

       He awoke in the morning in surprise that he should have fallen asleep. He looked curiously about his room with the recollection of his last night's experience in his mind, and breathed more freely when he found that he was the only occupant of the chamber.

       "It was a dream," he said with a laugh of satisfaction, as he leaped out of bed; "it was a curious dream. What have I to do with ancestors or ancestral spectres!"

       In truth, Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale had no use for either the one nor the other. The hardest part of his life had already been spent. He had gone as an errand boy, at the age of twelve, into the employ of a mercantile house, and had risen from one position to another by dint of perseverance and natural ability, until now, at the age of thirty, he was the junior partner of the firm. Ancestors could not benefit him now, and an ancestral ghost was altogether an useless piece of property.

       The events of the day drove the apparition of the previous night entirely from his thoughts, and it was not until his return homeward that he recalled it. As he entered his sitting room, however, the same shadowy figure that had roused him from sleep rose from the easy chair by the window and bowed him a welcome.

       "Oh, you've come back again, have you?" Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale exclaimed in a tone of disgust. "I was in hope you were nothing but the phantasy of a dream."

       "Yes, I'm back," answered the ghost with a grin. "There isn't anything dream-like about me."

       "Well, now you're here, you can go away again," Spuytenduyvil said, lighting the gas.

       "Thanks, but I've come to stay," replied the ghost, whose presence was still faintly visible. "You don't seem to appreciate that I'm an ancestral spectre, and, as such, bound to haunt you until your dying day."

       "But I don't want you," said Spuytenduyvil.

       "Awfully sorry, my dear boy, but you can't help it," said the ghost.

       The ghost was right — Spuytenduyvil couldn't help it. The ghost stuck to him, and the unwilling host at last concluded that the only thing left for him to do was to put up with the infliction with the best grace possible. This might not have been so very difficult had not the ghost developed, in course of time, certain eccentricities which continually caused annoyance. It was invisible, of course, to all of Spuytenduyvil's friends, but he could perceive its every motion. In fact, the ghost developed the most inordinate curiosity. When Spuytenduyvil's acquaintances visited him the spectre was not satisfied until it had investigated their hats and canes, their coats, and even the contents of their pockets, until Spuytenduyvil felt his anger becoming uncontrolable. It was quite a while before he learned to see these antics of his supernatural inheritance without remonstrating. He offended several of his friends by addressing uncomplimentary remarks to the ghost which they could not see, and others he frightened by apparently purposeless gesticulations. It began to be whispered about that Mr. Bloomingdale was showing unmistakable signs of insanity, and Spuytenduyvil hailed with enthusiasm the suggestion of his partners that he should proceed to Paris and investigate the affairs of their branch house there.

       Affairs kept Bloomingdale some eighteen months in the French capital, and in this period he met and fell violently in love with Marie de L'Arcantraite. Monsieur and Madame, the young lady's parents, were speedily satisfied that he was an eligible suitor, and that the settlements which he proposed were highly honorable; but to Spuytenduyvil's anger and disgust the ancestral ghost announced its displeasure at the match.

       "It makes no difference to me whether you like it or not," Spuytenduyvil said. "I wish you'd go 'way. You're only a nuisance, anyhow."

       "Well, I won't go," said the ghost testily. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't; and I wouldn't go now if I could. None of your ancestors ever married a Frenchwoman; and what you see in that girl to be so gone on her I can't imagine."

       "Confound my ancestors and you too," Spuytenduyvil ejaculated (only he used a much stronger expression). "Can't you take a leave of absence and clear out for a year or two?"

       "It's not permissible," said the ghost promptly. "I'm going to stay here and break off the match."
 

       We draw a veil over Spuytenduyvil's further remarks. They were vigorous and forcible, but ineffectual. The ghost was obstinate enough to have been an Englishman of the present generation. At the most inconvenient seasons it performed the most absurd antics. When Spuytenduyvil called upon his fiancée the ghost straightened the pictures on the wall and tried the effect of different arrangements of bric-a-brac on tables and shelves. Madame de L'Arcantraite grew nervous at these ghostly performances and Spuytenduyvil was obliged reluctantly to explain about the wraith. The old people liked the idea of his having plenty of money, but the possession of so lively an ancestral ghost was a decided disadvantage; nor could Madame become reconciled to the sight of her most fragile and cherished treasures borne through the air by invisible hands.

       Now, attached as chaplain to the L'Arcantraite family was a little, weazened priest, Father Loyola by name, who played cards with Madame of an evening, and was consulted by her on all worldly and spiritual matters. He was a shrewd, keen-witted old fellow, who knew human nature pretty thoroughly. He ridiculed the idea of an ancestral ghost as preposterous, and was inclined to suspect poor Spuytenduyvil of some deep treachery; but a few séances which the spectre thoughtfully provided when he was present speedily converted him into a believer.

       Madame and priest put their heads together; and the result of their confabulations was imparted to Bloomingdale, who cheerfully consented to their plans. So one afternoon, in the salon of the L'Arcantraite mansion, Father Loyola, arrayed in full canonicals, duly sprinkled Spuytenduyvil with holy water and read aloud the formula for the exorcism of spirits.

       As Spuytenduyvil was the only one present who could perceive the obnoxious spectre, it devolved upon him to report its behavior. At first it looked on curiously; then, as if assured that the ceremony was something exclusively personal to Spuytenduyvil, it turned away and wandered about the room in its usual prying manner.

       "I think, Father," Spuytenduyvil ventured to suggest, "that it is the ghost and not I that should be sprinkled."

       "But, my son," rejoined the chagrined priest, "the spectre is invisible to me."

       "I'll point it out," said Spuytenduyvil. "It stands now close to the book-case, behind the chair."

       Cautiously and on tip-toe, as boys approach a bird they hope to catch, the good priest crept up to the spot designated; but the ghost saw him coming and edged away. The experiment was a decided failure.

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *      *

       The period of probation passed, and Spuytenduyvil and Marie de L'Arcantraite were married. She could see the ancestral ghost, now that she was one of the family; and although it alarmed her at first, she soon grew accustomed to its presence. Still she did not relinquish the hope of ultimately getting rid of it. Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale and his wife went to New York directly after their marriage; and for several weeks Spuytenduyvil was busy showing Marie all the sights. Among the places to which they went was a spiritualistic séance. Of course the ancestral ghost went too; and Spuytenduyvil saw it kissing its hand to a pretty female spirit which the medium materialized. He called Marie's attention to the act.

       One evening several weeks later, when Spuytenduyvil returned home to his dinner, he found a stranger waiting, whom his wife introduced as Madame Mitchell, a spiritualistic medium.

       "We have joined forces against the ancestral ghost," Marie exclaimed gleefully.

       Then she proceeded to detail the scheme they had devised. She had enlisted Mrs. Mitchell's sympathies, and the pretty female spirit they had seen materialized was instigated by the medium to play the part of Delilah to the Sampson of Spuytenduyvil's ancestral spook.

       "And why do you think our previous exorcism failed?" Marie cried excitedly, when the story had reached this stage. Then, not waiting for an answer, she proceeded:

       "It is an English ghost — your ancestral spectre," she said, "and the English do not speak Latin as we of the Continent pronounce it."

       "Ah!" ejaculated Spuytenduyvil, a light breaking upon his mind, "it did not comprehend."

       "That's it," said his wife. "The pretty female ghost found out. It did not know that it was being exorcised."

       Of course, after this, Marie had set her heart upon having some one who understood the English method of pronouncing Latin perform once more the ceremony of exorcism; and of course Spuytenduyvil, as became an indulgent husband, yielded assent. The effect upon the ancestral ghost was curious. It listened more and more intently as the meaning of the rite became apparent to it, and when the priest had finished speaking, came to Spuytenduyvil, gave him a reproachful glance and faded from his sight.

       "It has gone!" said Marie.

       "Yes!" said Spuytenduyvil Bloomingdale. "It's you and I by ourselves now."

(THE END)