LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1632, 14 May 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A QUEER SPECTRE. ( Concluded.) ‘ I never j ractice magio,’ quietly replied the pilgrim, ‘and as to being an impostor, scan well my face. Don’t you recognise the family n ;se, thick, short, and generously colored ? How about the three lateral and two diagonal wrinkles on my brow ? I see them on yours. Are not my chaps Weinstein chaps. Look closely I court investigation. ’ ‘ You do look damnably like us,’ the Baron admitted. ‘I was the youngest,’ the stranger went on, ‘of quadruplets. My three brothers were puny, sickly things, and did not long survive their birth. As a chi'd I was the id >1 of my poor father, who had some traits worthy of respectful mention, guzzling old toper, and unconscionable thief though he was.’ The Baron winced. ‘ They used to call him Old Twenty Flasks. It is ray opinion, based on memory, that Old Forty rlasks would have been nearer the truth.’ ‘ It’s a lie,’shouted the Baron, ‘I rai’ely exceeded twenty bottles ’ ‘ And a for his standing ia the community,' the pilgrim went on, without taking heel of the interruption, ‘it must bo confessed that nothing could be worse. Ho was the terror of houest folk for miles around. Property rights were extremely insecure in this neighborhood, for the rapacity of my lamented parent knew no bounds. Y T et nobody dared to complain aloud, for lives were n“t much sa’er than sheep or ducats. How the hated his shadow, and roundly cursed him behind his hack ! I remember well that, when I was about fourteen —it must have been in ’66, the year the Grand l urk occupied Adrianople—tall Hugo, the miller, called me up to him, and said, ‘ Boy, thou hast a right pretty nose.’ *lt is a pretty nose, Hugo,’ said I, straightening up. ‘ Is it on firm and and str mg ?’ asked Hugo with a sneer. ‘ Firm enough, and strong enough, I daresay,’ I answered : ‘ but why such a fool’s question ?’ ‘ Well, well, boy,’ said Hugo, turning away ; ‘ look sharp with thine eyes after thy nose when thy father is unoccupied, for he has just that conscience to steal the nose off his son’s face in lack of better plunder ’ ‘By St. ( hristopher,’ roared the baron, ‘ tall Hugo, the miller, shall pay for this. I always susneoted him. By St. Christopher's burden. I’ll break every bone in his villainous body.’ ‘ ’Twould be an ignoble vengeance,’ replied the pilgrim quietly, ‘ f >r tall Hago has been in his grave these sixty years.’ ‘True,’ said the Baron, putting both hands to his head, and gazing at his guest with a look of utter helplessness. * I forgot that it is now next century—that is to say, if you be not a spectre.’ ‘ Yon will excuse me, my respected parent,’ returned the pilgrim, ‘if I subject your hypothesis to the test of logic, for it touches me upon a very tender spot, impugning, as it docs, my physical verity and my stairs as an actual individualized Fgo Now, what is our relative position? You acknowledge the date of my birth to have been the year of grace 1.332, That is a matter in which your memory is not likely to be at fault. On the other hand, with a strange inconsistency, you maintain, in the face of almanacs, chronologies, and the march of events, that it is still the year of grace 1332. one of the seven sleepers y-mr hallucination (to use no harahir term) might be pardoned, but you are neither a sleeper nor a saint. Now, every one of the eighty years that are packed away in the carpet-hag of my experience protests against your extraordinary error. It is I who have a prima facie right to question your physical existence, not you mine Did you ever hear of a ghost, spectre, wraith, apparition, eidolon, or spook coming out of the future to haunt, annoy, or frighten individuals of an earlier generation ?’ The Baron was obliged to admit that he never had.

* But you have hoard of instances where apparitions, ghosts, spooks—call them what you will —have invaded the Present from out the limho of the Pant?’ The Baron crossed himself a second time and peered anxiously into the dark corners of the ap r mient. ‘ If yon are a genuine von Weinstein,’ he whispered, ‘ you already know that this castle is overrun with spectres of that sort. It is difficult to move about after nightfall without tumbling over half-a-dozen of them.' ‘Then,’ said the placid logician, ‘you surrender your case. You commit what my r vered preceptor in dialectics, the learned Arabian, Ben Dusty, used to style syllogistic suicide. For you allow that, W’hile ghosts out of the full re are unheard of, ghosts from the past n o not nnfr< qu<nt : y encoun tered. Now, I submit to you, as a candid man. this prop-, sition : That it is infinitely more probable that yon aro a ghost than that I am one!’ The Baron turned very red. ‘ Is this filial,’ ho demanded, ‘to deny the flesh and blood of your own father • Is it paternal, 1 retorted the pilgrim, not losing his composure, ‘to insinuate the unroslncas of tire sou of your own begetting ‘l’ ‘ By all the saints 1’ growled the Baron, growing still redder, ‘thhj question shall bo settled, and speedily. Halloo, there, Senes chair 1 lo called again and again, but in vain. ‘ Spare your lungs/ calmly suggested the pilgrim, ‘ The bent traffic.l domestic in the

world will not stir from beneath the sod for all your shouting.’ Twenty Flasks sank back helplessly in his chair. Ho tried to speak, but his tongue and throat repudiated their functions. They only gurgled. ‘ That is right,’ said his guest, approvingly. ‘" oudu t yourself as befits a venerable and respectable ghost from the last century. /\ well-behaved apoariti"U neither blm-ters nor is violent You can weli afford to be peaceable in your deportment now; yon were turbulent enough before your 3eath.’ ‘ My death V gasped the Baron. ‘ Excuse me,’ apologized the pilgrim, ‘ for referring to that unpleasant event.’ ‘My death!’ stammered the Baron, his hair standing on end, ‘I should like to hear the particulars.’

‘ I was hardly more than fifteen at the tinm,’ said the pilgrim musingly ; ‘ but I shall never forget the most trifling circumstances of the great popular uprising that put an end to my worthy sire’s career. Exasperated beyond endurance by your outrageous crimes, the people for miles around at last rose in a body, aud, led by my old friend tall Hugo, the miller flocked to Schwinkenfels and appealed to your cousin, Count Conrad, for protection acainst yourself, thoir natural protector. Yon Schwinkenfels heard their complaints with gravity. He replied that he had long watched your abominable actions with distress and consternation, that he had frequently remonstrated with you, but in vain ; that he regarded you as the scourge of the neighborhood, that your castle was full of bloodstained treasure and shamefully acquired booty, and that he now regarded it as the personal duty of himself the conservator of lawful order and good morals, to march against Weinstein and exterminate you for the common good.’ ‘ The hypocritical pirate!’ exclaimed Twenty Flasks. ‘Which he proceeded to do,’ continued the pilgrim ; * supported not only by his retainers but by your own. I must say that yon made a sturdy defence. Had not your rascally Seneschal sold you out to Schwinkenfels and let flown the drawbridge one evening when you were as usual fuddling your brains with your twenty bottles, perhaps Conrad never would have gained an entrance, and my young eyes would have been spared the horrid task of watching the body of my venerable parent dangling at the end of a rope from the topmost turret of the northwest tower.’ The Baron buried his face in his hands and began to cry like a baby. ‘ They hanged me, did they ?’ he faltered. 4 I am afraid no other construction can be put on it,’ said the pilgrim. 4 lt was the inevitable termination of such a career as yours had been, 4 hey hanged you, they strangled you, they choked you to death with a rope ; aud the unanimous verdict of the community was justifiable homicide. You weep. Behold, father, I also weep for the shame of the house of Von Weinstein! Come to my arms !’ Father and son clasped each other in a long, (affectionate embrace, and mingled their tears over the disgrace of Weinstein. When the Baron recovered from his emotion he found himself alone with his conscience and twenty-four empty bottles. Thejpilgrim had disappeared. Chapter 111, Meanwhile, in the apartments consecrated to the offices of maternity, all had been confusion, turmoil aud distress. In four huge arm chairs sat four experienced matrons, each holding in her lap a pillow of swan’s down. On each pillow had reposed an infinitesimal fraction of humanity, recently added to the sum total of Yon Weinttein, One experienced matron fell asleep over her charge; when she awoke the pillow in her Jap was unoccupied. An immediate census taken by the alarmed attendants disclosed the startling fact that, although there were still four arm chairs and four sage women and four pillows of swan’s-down, there were but three Infants. The Seneschal, as an expert in mathematics and accounts, was hastily summoned from below. His reckoning merely confirmed the appalling suspicion. One of the quadruplets was gone. Prompt measures were taken in this fearful emerg -ncy. The corners of the rooms were ransacked in vain. Files of bed clothing aud baskets of linen were searched through aud through. The hunt extended to other parts of the castle. The Seneschal even sent out trusted and discreet retainers on horseback to scour the surrounding country. They returned with downcast countenances; no trace of the lost Von Weinstein had been found. During one terrible hour the wails of the three neglected infants mingled with the screams of the hysterical mother, to whom the attention of the four sage women was exclusively directed. At the end of the hour her ladyship had sufficiautly recovered to imporc her attendants to make a last though hopeless count. On the three pillows lay three babies howling lustily in unison. On the fourth pillow reposed a fourth infant, with a mysterious smile upon its face, but cheeks that bore traces of recent tears.