THE GHOST IN GREEN,
OR, THE MYSTERY OF RIDGEVILLE.

---

WHY DID HE DO IT?

THAT is what the good people of Ridgeville continually wanted to know. The matter had been a standing subject of wonder to them for years. The wisest heads in the town had been put together to solve the mystery, but were taken apart again without any satisfactory result. It was a puzzle to everybody, and a source of much joy and profit to the landlord of the Wellington Hotel (the meanest village tavern is an hotel in these enlightened days), who was called upon in the way of business to deal out countless glasses of beer, hot whiskey, rum, and other inspiriting cordials to the worthies who sat in council around his great open fire grate, spitting therein from to time, in the fine rural manner, in order to relieve minds already reduced to chaos in the effort to probe the great mystery.

      If the noble male mind which, it is well known, never stoops to gossiping and scandal, should condescend to be absorbed by this distracting question, it is not to be wondered at that the women of Ridgeville went nearly wild about it. The amount of tea consumed in discussing it one would think must have necessitated the most intimate and friendly relations between the storekeeper of the village and the Emperor of China, for it seemed as if no other motive than that of friendship could ever have induced that imperial personage to part with such enormous quantities of his favourite herb. But the deliberations held over the cup that cheers were fully as fruitless as those in the bar-room over the one which inebriates.

THE RECLUSE. — THE MYSTERY.

      Allen Forrest was much changed. That they all admitted. But what had worked the great change in him? That was the question in dispute. It is true his wife had died suddenly. So had the wives of other men who had not refused to be comforted after a decent season. She had died before she had been two days a wife. But other men had been made widowers on their wedding-day, and yet recovered from the blow.

      "Look at Mr. Struggles," said a spinster of uncertain age. Mr. Struggles was the well-to-do butcher of Ridgeville. "Look at Mr. Struggles; his Cynthy Ann died of cramps before they had been married a week. Yet see how happy he is now with his third wife and his fourteen children!"

      "Yes, indeed!" said another, a blooming matron with four marriageable daughters; "there's as good fish in the sea as ever was caught."

      So it was unanimously voted that Allen Forrest's lifelong despair could not be based entirely upon the loss of his wife. What, then, was the motive of his extraordinary and incomprehensible conduct? Why had he kept himself for twenty long years shut up like a hermit in a single room in his father's old house on the outskirts of the town? Why there bury himself from the eyes of the world, and refuse all comers, even his oldest friends, and so continue to live, long after the death of his father and mother surrounded by two or three old servants, but never departing for a moment from the rule which had regulated all his years of sorrow, never passing by a hair's line the threshold of that mysterious apartment, the one in which his wife had met her death? Was it because of something unnatural and unholy in the manner of that death? Was it because a great crime had been committed? There were vague rumours to this effect, but they were only fostered by the more malicious spirits of the village. In fact, every one had his or her own private theory upon the subject of Allen Forrest's strange seclusion, and the opinions of the Ridgevillians in regard to the great mystery were quite as diverse as are those of theologians on the subject of infant baptism.

THE GOSSIPS AT FAULT.

      The town, as I have hinted, periodically went into committee of the whole on the question. At the beginning of each session one and all agreed to divest their minds of all previously conceived and to start fresh and fair, open to conviction on any reasonable ground. But, as is the case in most arguments, no one was convinced that his own idea was not the right one, the matter generally ended by their all asserting that fact, one after the other, which led, I am pained to say, to exhibitions of temper.

      When little Miss Chips, the milliner, hinted at lumbago as the most probable explanation, every eye in the assembly gazed down upon her from the altitude of a seventh cup of tea, in pity and in scorn; and for no other reason than that Mrs. Brown, the Presbyterian minister's wife, threw out the word paralysis at one of these meetings, Miss Chickering, the asthmatic and wealthy Miss Chickering, gave up her pew in the church, became forthwith a devout Episcopalian, and erased from her will all mention of the sanctuary of the unfortunate Brown.

      The contests of Guelf and Ghibbeline, of the White Roses and the Red, were mimicked in miniature in this little village of Ridgeville. And, meanwhile, the author of the strife sat sad and solitary in that dismal room in the old mansion at the edge of the village, all unconscious of the gabble that was made about him.

THE STRANGER.

      "My friend, can you tell me the way to Mr. Forrest's place?"

      The question was addressed by a stout-built, handsome gentleman on horseback, to one of a troop of loungers about the blacksmith's shop in Ridgeville, one bleak and blustering November afternoon.

      "You don't want to see old Squire Forrest," said the villager, "do you? 'Cos he's dead, e'en a'most ten year."

      "No; I have no wish to see the squire at present," returned the stranger, with a smile. "It is his son, Mr. Allen Forrest, that I am looking for."

      "Then I'm afeard you wont find him," said the other; "he keeps himself mighty close, I can tell you. Not a man in the village has seen hide nor hair of him since the day his wife died."

      A twinge of sadness came to the stranger's face at these words, and being now informed of the direction he should take, he rode off with a hasty "Thank you" to his informant, and soon reached the tall, gaunt fir-trees, that stood like attenuated sentinels, guarding the approaches to the Forrest mansion.

      The arrival of a stranger in Ridgeville, and of a stranger, too, who persisted in going to see the mysterious recluse, Allen Forrest, was an item of thrilling importance, entitling the bearer to the highest ambassadorial honours. The lounger, who had been the spokesman of the party at the blacksmith's shop, was accordingly treated with distinguished consideration in the bar-room of the Wellington Hotel that night. Many were the steaming and stimulating savoury glasses tendered him that evening, without money and without price, and often was he entreated to tell his story over again to a new comer, repeat the exact words the stranger had used, the exact words he himself had used, at what point in the conversation the stranger's face suffered a change, etc., etc. And though those who were with him at the time endeavoured to share the honours of the narrative, he would brook no infringement upon his copyright, and entered into eleemosynary intoxication in solitary state.

THE RIVALS. — LOVE'S DREAM.

[The rest of the story is told by the stranger]

I SCARCELY know what moved me to visit Allen Forrest. It was certainly not from any love I bore him. We were warm and close friends once, in our college days, but the distrust we felt for each other when we found that we were both paying court to beautiful Clara Temple, ripened, on my side, into hate when she declared her preference for him. I can see now, in the coolness of time, that she neither loved me nor endeavoured to make me believe that she did. She was too noble a soul to flirt. That combination of vanity and heartlessness which goes by the name, which tramples the flower of an honest man's love into the eternal mire, was too mean a trick for her to understand or practice. But the "trifles light as air," which seem so strong a confirmation to the lover, fed me with vain hopes. The courtesies, which came of a natural kindness, I misconstrued as an encouragement. For months I blundered on in this blind way. I came to love her passionately — madly. The mere touch of her soft, little hand, on greeting me, sent a rapturous thrill throughout my whole body. I had such a holy regard for her that she seemed like a sacred presence in the room. I lifted her, by my love, to so high a place, that I, myself, could not approach her.

      An hundred times I trembled on the brink of a declaration of my love, and each time drew back again, frightened at my own audacity. Still I felt that she must be mine in the end, simply because she was the only woman in the world whom I could love. With her, life would be sunshine and a smooth road; without her, darkness and ugly pit-falls.

DISAPPOINTMENT, AND THE HEART'S REVENGE.

      In my youthful enthusiasm I made a confidant of my chum, Allen Forrest, and poured the story of my love into his ear. Soon after I took him to see my beauty. We now visited her house frequently in company. Soon I discovered that he went of his own accord, after that. Next I learned that they took long walks in the woods together. Concealed behind a tree, I surprised them in one of these rambles. His hand was about her waist, and, as he talked, she gazed up into his face with all the tenderness of love. Great God! I could have torn his heart out and thrown it to the dogs! that night I wrote her a letter full of raving and reproaches. I pinned on the page a little slip of mignonette which she had given me (probably without a thought of the significance which I attached to it), and encircled it with scorching sarcasms. The poor leaves seemed to wither at the burning words. In another letter I upbraided Allen Forrest as a traitor whose name I never wished to hear again. I spat upon his pretended friendship, and loaded him with my curses. Before morning dawned I had left the place, a broken-hearted man. The light of my life was out. I groped along in utter darkness, and for months I shunned the eyes of man, hugging my griefs in a solitude of my own making. This brought on a fever, and I was now sick in body as well as in soul. I prayed to die, but that the cursed doctor saved me.

      At the end of a year I heard that they were married. I had suffered so much in anticipation of the news that it could give me no additional pang. I had become callous to pain. Three days afterwards I learned that she was dead!

(To be continued.)
 

THE GHOST IN GREEN,
OR, THE MYSTERY OF RIDGEVILLE.

---

PART THE SECOND.

      The news at first stupified rather than horrified me. A grim satisfaction at the blow which had fallen upon my rival, mingled with a regret at the death of one whom I had so fondly loved. In my miserable vanity I looked upon her sudden death as an act of Divine retribution for my wrongs. I exulted that my enemy's happiness had been of such short duration. When the first revengeful gust had passed, a sombre sadness came over me. It was desolating to think that the face that was once so dear to me was now coldly set in death; that the heaving bosom on which I had so longed to lay my weary head, as in a place of refuge, was wrapped in the embrace of the chilling shroud, that the rigid fingers should know no love-pressure for evermore. I knew that she was not mine and never would be, but it did not seem that I had utterly lost her until I heard that she was dead. That was the last bitter drop left in the bottom of the cup.

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH.

      There was a mystery, too, surrounding this sudden death that added to my grief. Clara Forrest (how I hated to think of her by that name!) died in her father-in-law's house on the second night after her marriage. She was found a corpse in her bed by the servants in the morning. Her husband, hastily summoned from her side a few hours after the wedding ceremony, to attend the deathbed of a near relative, returned to find his wife in her coffin. The cause of her sudden flight had never been explained. The mystery, if mystery it was, was fast locked in the bosoms of the Forrest family. The authorities of the village had suggested a post-mortem examination, and even insisted upon it at first, but the idea was so horrible to the mind of his son, that Squire Forrest used his influence and put the proposition down.

THE DETERMINATION.

      The matter stirred the gossips, as might have been expected, and gave rise to any number of extraordinary stories, but I had never heard a single intelligent solution of the case. As time passed on — Time, which is said to heal wounds that defy the physician's skill, but which only served to cauterize mine — I went into business, mechanically, because a man must do something to save himself from suicide, and fortune, which I neither sought nor cared for, came unto me. I am now known as a rich man, and esteemed accordingly. So twenty years have rolled by. My hair is slightly streaked with grey, but Allen Forrest, they told me, the other day, was a crooked white-haired man, bent down with the weight of his sorrow. The stories they told me of him interested me; they said he had not stirred from the room in which she died since the fatal morning twenty years ago, that he would receive no visitors, and there lived a sour and misanthropical life. I do not know what spirit possessed me, but I determined to go and see him. Last Wednesday, I set out on horseback for the village near which he lives. There a rustic clown directed me to his house.

DECAY AND DESOLATION.

      A sharp trot soon brought me to the place. Funereal fir-trees skirted the front of the house. There was a general air of decay about the grounds. What was once a pleasant garden had become, through neglect, a patch of rank weeds. A gravel walk, whose white pebbles had turned yellow, offered a fair field for forward thistles, and had been taken advantage of accordingly. The fence that partially protected it from stray cows was in the last stage of infirmity, and trembled so violently when I dismounted and opened the gate, that I was afraid it would all come down with a crash. The house, towards which I now walked with my horse's bridle on my arm, had a similar air of mouldiness. Wormeaten and moss-covered shutters closed all the windows but two on its front side. These were on the second floor, and from them proceeded a fitful light like that of a wood fire. This light, with the exception of a feeble curl of smoke from a back chimney struggled for ascendancy with the atmosphere was the only sign of life that the place afforded.

THE ARRIVAL AND ITS RESULT.

      I hammered heavily on the front door with the butt of my whip. The echoes sounded dismally along the wall within and died away, but no one came. Again I rapped and waited. Still no answer. The delay was vexatious, the more especially as the clouds which had threatened all the day now broke forth in rain. I sought the back of the house, where, in a little kitchen, I found a grizzled old woman bending over a fire, absorbed in cooking.

      "My good woman," said I, "is Mr. Forrest at home?"

      She turned round upon me with a glance of astonishment and grunted,

      "No."

      "When did he go out?"

      "He never goes out."

      "He must be at home now, then."

      "No, he isn't."

      "How do you explain that?"

      "Don't bother."

      The old woman turned again to her cooking, and having thus dismissed me from her mind, apparently lost all consciousness of my presence.

      I recommenced:

      "But I must see him, I say."

      She lifted up her head from the fire in angry surprise.

      "You here again! Go away! No one is allowed to come here."

      "No one?"

      "No one!"

      "But I am an exception."

      "I always set the dog on exceptions. Here, Rover! Rover! Rover!"

      She whistled as well as her spare teeth would allow, but the dog was either an imaginary one or else was out of hearing. No Rover appeared. The old woman was discomfited. I saw that it was necessary to follow up my advantage with firmness.

      "Old woman, whether you take me to see your master or not is of no consequence to me. I shall go in spite of you. Get out of the way."

      I made two or three steps towards a door that led into the main body of the house.

      "Stop!" she shrieked, throwing her skinny arms up in affright and planting herself in my path.

      I recoiled involuntarily as her unearthly scream smote my ear, but it was only for an instant.

      "Stop! I say," she cried again, and with increased vehemence. "Don't go there. In the name of God don't go there! He'd kill me if I should let anybody in. He'd kill himself. He'd kill you. He'd kill all of us? He's not in his right mind, sir. What do you want to see him for? Nobody ever troubles us here. I'm a withered, old woman, and he's a broken-hearted man. Go away, I say, if you've a heart in your bosom, and leave us alone."

      "Woman! I must see your master."

      Again she remonstrated, but I pushed her aside, and had nearly gained the door, when, finding herself overpowered, the old woman cried out:

      "Stop! I'll go! Let me go, sir. I'll take your name. You won't come in if he doesn't want you, sir, will you?"

      "No; of course not."

      "He — says — you — may — come — in."

THE RECEPTION.

      Leading the way, and turning around every step to look at me again, as if I were some supernatural being whom she momentarily expected to see vanish in a cloud of yellow fire, the old woman passed into a damp hall, thence up a ricketty staircase, and finally stopped at a door distinguished from the rest by the faint gleams of light that struggled through its chinks.

      The old woman rapped at the door with her bony knuckles.

      "Come in," cried a feeble voice.

      The old woman opened the door, and I entered.

      Crouched in an armchair by the fire was a figure, as different from the Allen Forrest that I had known, as light from darkness. For an instant I thought that there must be some mistake, and was on the point of retiring, but at the sound of my footstep he rose from his chair, not without some difficulty, and said in a voice wholly destitute of emotion:

      "Edwin Gervaise, what do you want with me?"

THE PAST A BLANK.

      The well-remembered voice recalled me, and we stood facing each other. By his mien he showed that he had no interest in the answer to the question he had asked, and that if I had not chosen to respond he would have calmly seated himself again and left me to stand there for countless ages. All concern in the business of life seemed gone from him. He paid no heed to persons or events. The great flood of misfortune that had poured upon him had washed away all traces of his connection with the outer world. I had not determined in myself what the character of cur interview should be. The impulse that had led me to his house had not resolved itself into anything definite in regard to my actions when there. Whether the meeting should be one of anxiety or recrimination I could not tell. With the wrong he had done me still lingering in my memory and the thought that he had not yet forgotten the old feelings of rivalry, I counted upon a cool reception, and was prepared to meet ice with ice. But when I looked upon his bent and trembling form, his pale face in which grief had ploughed her deepest furrow, his bowed head and snowy locks that something else than years had whitened, I felt, indeed, that his sorrow had been greater than mine, and my heart was softened to him. Resentment could not abide in the presence of so much misery.

      "Edwin Gervaise, what do you want of me?" he said again, in precisely the same tone of voice as before.

      "I have come to — to see you, Allen."

      "I am a sorry sight to see," he said sadly, with a glance downward at his shrivelled limbs; "and for many years I have denied every one. But I see that you do not come with malice."

      "No, it would be folly now. We will forget our quarrel."

      "I am glad to hear you say that. I wish to be at peace with you ere I die, and I feel already that I have not long to live. There, your hand. Sit down."

(To be continued.)
 

THE GHOST IN GREEN,
OR, THE MYSTERY OF RIDGEVILLE.

---

PART THE THIRD.

RECONCILIATION OF THE OLD-TIME ENEMIES. from Frank Leslie's Ten Cent Monthly (1863-nov)

IN RETROSPECT.

      He resumed his armchair, and I took a seat on the opposite side of the fire. He leaned his head upon his thin, white hand and gazed at the crackling logs. Neither of us was disposed to speak, and for some time nothing broke the silence of the room but the howling of the wind without and the patter of the rain upon the window-panes.

      I looked about the room. It was simply furnished, and betokened in its arrangements the habits of an ascetic. Over the bed hung the portrait of her whom we both had cause to remember so well, and on the table at Forrest's right hand were strewn some letters, in a feminine hand-writing, with which he had evidently been engaged prior to my coming. They were yellow with age, these letters, crumpled with much handling, and spotted over as if by tears. One had but to look at them to know the story of their reader's solitary pleasure. Only one thing remarkable I noticed in the room. This was the appearance of the walls, which here and there, at the height of a man's head from the floor, were deeply indented. In some places the wall-paper had been torn off, and the crumbling plaster bulged out from its brick base.

      When I had finished making these observations I turned again to Forrest. He was still gazing abstractedly into the fire.

      "You never leave this room, they tell me," said I.

      "No," he replied, rousing himself from his reverie. "She died here."

      Again he settled himself in his chair, again fixed his eyes steadily upon the fire.

      "What — you will not think me inquisitive, Allen? — what was the manner of her death? its suddenness was always inexplicable to me."

      "I will tell you," he said. "I have never breathed a word of it to mortal man — not that I wished to keep it a secret, but because it pained me to talk about it. But you have a right to know. You remember when we were married?"

THEIR SEPARATION.

      "Pardon me," he added, noting the change that came over my face, "my own grief makes me forget that others too have suffered. Immediately after the wedding we started for this, my father's house. On the road I was overtaken by a messenger, riding post-haste, who brought me the news of the desperate illness of a rich old uncle living some hundred miles away, together with a summons to instantly attend his bedside. In another envelope was a postscript from the physician in charge, warning me to use all possible dispatch, as he would not answer for the life of my relative for more than forty-eight hours longer. I was nearly distracted by the dilemma in which I was thus placed. This uncle had always been very kind to me. Having no children of his own, he had made a pet of me from boyhood. He had more than once announced his intention of leaving me heir to his vast property. There could be no doubt that he intended to ratify his promise in this last visit. It seemed cruel, even inhuman, to let so good a friend die surrounded only by menials. On the other side stood the beautiful woman who had just been made mine, the bridal kisses yet warm upon her lips. Duty and interest drew me towards my uncle; love held me by my wife. In my sore strait I appealed to Clara for advice and rested the case with her. With that calm wisdom which she seemed ever to possess, she counseled me to lose no time in repairing to my uncle. She urged that it would be a pitiful recompense for all his kindness to desert him in his dying hour. Thus strengthening my resolve she induced me to leave her to continue her journey alone. She did not attempt to disguise the pang which the sudden parting cost her, but it was best that we should make the sacrifice, and she, on her side, made it without a murmur. I folded her in my arms in a long embrace, and then hurried away, fearful lest my ardour should get the better of my good intentions and take me back to her. In a few minutes I was being whirled away in an opposite direction. I reached my uncle just in time to receive his farewell blessing and to learn from his own lips that I was henceforth an independently rich man.

THE FORTUNE.

      "As soon as the last sad rites were over I hastened back to my bride on the wings of the wind. On the way I indulged myself in rosy speculations as to the future. Riches were mine — riches which would command every luxury in life. The wildest whim of my love I could gratify. We would go abroad and seek in foreign lands those soft delights which superior art and refinement afford. Lapped in the lazy airs of Italy we would live and dream of love alone.

THE SURPRISE.

      "Even though occupied with such blissful thoughts the journey seemed an endless one. At last, however, I reached my father's house. The strange stillness which reigned about the place surprised me. I had expected joyousness and bustle. But everything was quiet, and even the dumb animals seemed to have forsaken their usual avocations. No men servants were stirring in the fields where, ordinarily, all were so busy. As I neared the house I discovered the shutters of a certain room on the second floor — the Green Chamber we called it, the paper on its walls and its general decorations being of that color — were closed. It was the room which had been set apart for us! Nearer still, and I saw crape on the door. At this a bolt of ice shot through my heart. I attempted to advance, but seemed rooted to the ground; to cry out, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. A shudder ran through my whole body. I gasped and fell.

THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.

      "When I returned to consciousness I was lying in a bed. A whispered consultation was going on near me.

      "'Is he any better, doctor?' was said in a voice which I recognized as that of my mother.

      "'Yes; I think he will soon be able to get up, but he has a hard trial before him. The delirium of the past three weeks has left him very weak, mentally as well as physically, and I fear to have her death mentioned to him again.'

THE BOWL IS BROKEN.

      "It was true, then. Clara, my life, my love, was dead! And I had been delirious for three weeks! The cold earth hid her from me for ever, and I might not look upon her face again, even in death. I bit my flesh in my agony.

      "It was many weeks more before they would tell me any of the details of her death. Then I learned that she had arrived toward evening on the day on which I had left her to go on that ill-fated journey. She appeared to be in perfect health. That night she slept in the green chamber. The next morning she appeared at breakfast looking very pale. My mother, with a woman's quick eye, discovered that she was ailing, and when they were alone together asked her what the matter was. But Clara answered 'Nothing,' and turned the conversation. The next morning she did not appear at breakfast. A servant, sent to look for her, knocked at the door without eliciting any response. The family now became alarmed. The door was broken in. My pretty bride was found dead in her bed, her face distorted and her body twisted as if she had suffered most horrible convulsions.

FORREST'S REGRETS.

      "When I heard this an awful rage came upon me. I felt like a demon. I cursed my father and mother for letting her die thus under their very roof without aiding her. I accused the whole household of murdering her. I cursed myself for leaving her to their tender mercies on our wedding-day. If I had been near they would not have dared to murder her. I called upon, I besought them in the name of Heaven to give me back my sweet love. At last, prostrated by my own violence, I sobbed myself to sleep.

THE DEATH CHAMBER.

      "When I had sufficiently recovered to be able to move about I insisted upon going into the Green Chamber, and notwithstanding strenuous opposition on the part of my mother, succeeded in carrying my point. Once here I locked the door and refused to see any one. When dinnertime came my dinner was sent up to me. What my reflections were, alone in the death-chamber, I need not tell you. You can imagine without any assistance from me. In my calmer moments I endeavoured to determine what had been the cause of her sudden death. That her death had been a violent one there could be no room for doubt. But who could have killed her? She had not an enemy in the world that I knew of or could imagine. Besides this, how could any one have gained access to the room? On that fatal morning the door was found locked on the inside, and the windows were too high from the ground to admit of an entrance by that means. Wearied with these heavy thoughts I at last threw myself upon the bed and fell asleep.

A DEMON AND HIS SPELLS.

      "Soon, whether in my dreams, or in that strange state of torpor which is neither sleeping or waking, I saw rising before me a green monster whose face was filled with diabolical hate. This horrid figure grew gradually into extraordinary proportions. His hideous head reached the ceiling, and when he stretched out his arms his crooked fingers touched the walls on either side of the room. In his body this creature was formed like a Titan. His great chest looked like an iron wall, and the muscles swelled big on his enormous arms. His eyes were fierce with a savage lustre, and his teeth were long and cruel. The unearthly color of his skin added to the terror with which he inspired me. My soul shivered in affright at the very sight of him. Presently he took a step in advance. As he moved he seemed to pervade the whole room. There was no escape from him. He took another step. I could feel his hot and revolting breath. I saw, too, that he carried in his right hand a bar of iron heated red hot. Before I had time to look again he leaped suddenly upon me. Crushed by his weight and sickened by his breath which now came upon my very lips, I felt that all resistance would be useless. After glaring at me for a moment thus, the monster fastened his long sharp claws into my breast, and tore my flesh with a hellish delight. I called aloud in my agony for help, but there was no help. The fiend continued to cause me intolerable pains. It seemed as if he were digging for my heart. "

(To be continued.)
 

THE GHOST IN GREEN,
OR, THE MYSTERY OF RIDGEVILLE.

---

PART THE FOURTH.

THE DEMON OF THE CHAMBER.

      "At last, after what seemed to me an age of suffering, he rose, and passing the red-hot iron over my eyes, vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.

      "How I survived the night I know not. In the morning I was too weak to rise, and a servant was obliged to carry me back into my old room. I told no one of what had passed.

      "At first I attempted to dismiss the matter as an hallucination of my overwrought brain. But the sharp pains in my chest and the soreness of my eyes would not permit of this theory.

      "During the day I bribed one of the farm servants to pass the night in the green chamber. He was a great strapping fellow who could have felled an ox at one blow of his fist, but with the superstition of his class he had an antipathy to sleeping in a room in which a death had occurred. A large sum of money, however, quieted his fears, and he finally consented to the experiment. At about midnight he ran into my room, the picture of abject terror, crossing himself as he ran, and calling upon the Holy Virgin to protect him.

      "'Oh murther! murther! oh for the love of God what did you send me in the room for! Oh! I've seen a ghost! a ghost all in green! He jumped upon me, and tore me chest with his iron nails. Oh, murther! what did I go into the room for! No wonder the poor lady died there.'

      "It was some time before the fellow was sufficiently recovered to give me a connected account of his experience. When he did I found that it corresponded almost exactly with my own.

      "There was some mystery about this ghost, then, which could not be attributed to the imagination. This lusty boor had never imagined anything in his life, and yet he had seen the phantom as well as I.

THE MYSTERY SOLVED.

      "There happened at this time to be a distinguished physician from New York visiting at one of our neighbours. To him I wrote, saying that I could not trust any of our village doctors, and that I wished to consult with him on a matter of grave importance. He soon came. I told him the symptoms of my complaint, for I still suffered acutely in the chest, and ended by confiding to him the story of my night's experience in the green chamber.

      "He requested to be shown to the room in question. I escorted him hither. He had no sooner entered than he complained of the bad air, and threw up a window. He then began to search the apartment. Presently he stopped before a pile of old books in a corner. He brushed one of them off with his hand, as a preliminary to looking into it. When he had done this I noticed a green dust on the tips of his fingers. I called his attention to the fact. He quietly answered:

      "'I thought so,' and stooping down, ran his finger through a ridge of this green dust on the corner of another book. He next tore a scrap of the green paper from the wall.

      "'I will undertake," said he, 'to exorcise the demon who has twice so cruelly made you feel his power.'

      "'What! how, doctor, can it be done?'

MURDER IN THE WALLS.

      "'The plan is very simple. You have been poisoned by the arseniate of copper. Luckily, you only endured it one night. In her novel situation, distracted by your absence, and probably afraid of being laughed at for her girlish fears, your wife braved the danger twice, and paid the penalty with her life.'

      "Good God! you do not tell me so! My suspicions then were correct, and she was murdered.'

      "'Murdered, yes, but only indirectly by human hands. This chamber, you tell me, was a long time in disuse, and was only opened after many years, to receive yourself and wife. The color of this wall-paper is a chemical preparation, the base of which is arsenic. Thence comes the dust which I just now shook from those books there. In stirring about the room you put in movement the poisonous particles which have so long found a resting-place on the furniture, the books, the carpet and the bed-curtains. This attacked you by the mouth, the nose and the eyes. Some of it even got into your lungs, and endangered your life. As for the demon, the suffocation from which you suffered and your excited brain gave birth to him. Have every inch of this cursed wall-paper torn off and burnt, the room thoroughly washed and aired, and you may sleep in it with as much impunity as in the white-papered room which we have just left.'

      "The doctor bowed, and took his departure.

DESPAIR, RESIGNATION, AND SOLITUDE.

      "When he was gone I regretted that I had ever called him. If he had but told me that Clara's murderer was a living being, a man or woman, whom I could have hunted through the world and wreaked my vengeance on at last, it seemed to me that it would have been some assuagement of my griefs. But that that sweet life should be put out by these dumb walls! The thought was maddening, and in my fury I flung myself upon them and beat them until my hands were bruised and bloody.

      "But such outbursts could not last for ever, and after a time I settled down to my fate. Move in the world again I could not. Ambition had been seared out of me as with a hot iron. My superabundant wealth made all exertion unnecessary, and I resolved to live henceforth the life of a hermit.

      "This room being prepared as the doctor had advised, I moved into it, and here have lived ever since.

      "My father and mother died years ago. The servants have all wandered off, for I had no work for them to do, and the old woman whom you saw below is the only soul that shares the solitude of this dreary house with me."

      Hardly had Forrest ceased speaking when a terrific peal of thunder broke apparently right over our heads. It was succeeded by a sharp flash of lightning, which cast a lurid glare throughout the room. I started involuntarily at this ominous finale to the sad story I had just heard. Forrest leaped upon his feet. There was a wild look in his eye, and I feared that he might be on the point of committing some desperate act. He walked slowly, and with tottering steps, towards the bed, his eyes fixed upon the portrait which surmounted it.

      "I am coming," he said, waving his hand towards the beautiful face. "I am coming — Clara — love — I am coming."

      Another deep roar of thunder and a loud crash as if the heavens were falling.

      When I looked again Allen Forrest lay prone on the floor, his hands stretched out in the direction of the picture which he had endeavored to reach.

      I hastened to raise him and pour the words of tenderness and consolation into his ear. But it was too late now.

      He was dead.

[THE END.]