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Mr. Whiston listened eagerly. “Poor fellow! I hope he will die,” said he sadly; and then, hesitating a moment: “Do you believe in ghosts, Ainslie?”

“No,” said Jack, with the least flicker of a smile as I caught his eye; “that is, I’ve never seen one myself. But there are very strange things that one can’t explain to one’s satisfaction.”

“I know that the dead come back,” said Mr. Whiston, speaking very low, and not looking at either of us. “John Ainslie,” said he suddenly, “I never shall see you again. I’m not going to live long at any rate, and you and your sister have given me more of the old-time feeling than I have had for many a day before. It seems as if I were at home with you. I suppose you will say I am a monomaniac at the very least; but I’m going to tell you what it is that has been slowly killing me. You’re a doctor, and you may put any name to it you like, and call it a disease of the brain; but Henry Dunster follows me.”

Jack and I stole a glance at each other, and I felt the strongest temptation to look over my shoulder. Jack reached over, and filled Mr. Whiston’s glass; and the Transcript startled me by sliding to the floor.

“I don’t often speak of it now: people only laugh at the idea,” said our guest, with a faint smile. “But it is most horribly real to me. It sometimes seems the only thing that is real.” And this is the story he told:–

“When I was in college, you know, Henry roomed with me; and at one time we were greatly interested in what we called then superstition and foolishness. We thought ourselves very wise, and thought we could explain every thing. There was a craze among some of the students about spirit-rappings, and that sort of thing; and we went through with a good deal of nonsense, and wasted a good deal of time, in trying to ravel out mysteries, and to explain things that no mortal man has ever yet understood. One night very late we were talking, and grew much excited; and we promised each other solemnly that the one who died first would appear to the other, if such a thing were possible, and would at least warn him in a way that should be unmistakable of his death. We were half in fun and half in earnest, God forgive us! and we made that awful promise to each other. Then we went into the army, and I don’t remember thinking of it once until the very night before he was killed. We were sitting together under a tree, after a hard day’s fight, and Dunster said to me, laughing, ‘Do you remember we promised each other, that whoever died first would appear to the other, and follow him?’ I laughed,–you know how reckless we were in those days when death and dying were so horribly familiar,–and I said the same shell might kill us both, which would be a great pity. We were very merry and foolish; and I should have said Henry had been drinking, but there had been nothing to drink and hardly any thing to eat: you remember we were cut off from our supplies, and the men had very little in their haversacks. Next day the fight was hotter than ever, and we were being driven back, when I saw him toss up his hands, and fall. He must have been trodden to death at any rate. When we regained that little field beyond the woods some days afterward, they had dragged off the wounded, and buried the dead in shallow trenches. I knew Dunster was dead; and I stood on picket near a trench which was just about where he fell, and I cried in the dark like a girl. I loved Dunster. You know he was the only near relative I had in the world whom I cared any thing for, and ours wasn’t a bonfire friendship. He had his faults, I know he wasn’t liked in the class. He was a brilliant fellow; but I used to be afraid he might go to the bad. Do you remember that night, Ainslie? The men were so tired that they had dropped down anywhere in the mud to sleep, and there was some kind of a bird in the woods that gave a lonely, awful cry once in a while.”