elapsed before the bodies could be even found. When they were, the little boy was still clasped as in a vice in the arms of his dead mother. Her face was terrible to look at. I wish I had never seen it, for it haunts me to this hour. The great hall, into which the bodies were brought, was hung with black, and there for two days they lay in state.
“The accident (as it was supposed to be) made much noise. Crowds of people came to see the beautiful young Countess, as she lay with her little son in the last sleep of death, and to show their sympathy with her bereaved husband. I and the children’s attendant were, besides my master and Lady Alix, the only people who ever knew the truth; and I knew what none could know besides, though they probably guessed it. After the body was found, however, they questioned me, and I told them all I knew. They listened with sad scared faces; and then my young lady called me in, and told me how, about a month ago, she had quarrelled with her affianced lover; that my lord, her cousin, had tried to reconcile them, and yesterday had brought her a letter from the Baron de Lisle, and made her promise to forgive him and become his wife; that she was hastening back to the castle to tell her cousin of her happiness, when she saw the dreadful sight. Then she led me on to the children’s room, and there showed me the little motherless Jeanne, as she lay on her bed, and made me promise never to leave her. I did so; but before many weeks the child lay by her dead mother’s side in the tomb of the Carlans. She died of fits brought on by fright. Soon after the old Baroness de Lisle came, and took my sweet lady to her future home. The Count went abroad, and the castle was shut up. I married a young man who had been my fiancé for some months, and they gave us the place in charge. My lord was a broken-hearted man; he never held up his head again, and died, I believe, in Italy. Carlan then belonged to the Lady Alix, but she never came here.
“I had lived in hopes of seeing her again, but one day a youth came here with an old attendant. He needed not have told me his name, for he had every line of his dear mother’s face. He said he was Henri de Lisle; that he came to me with his mother’s greeting, to beg I would go to see her, for she was very ill. I was ill too, and could not go, and before I was well enough to travel, my sweet lady was dead! I have seen none of the young people since, but I love the place still, in memory of those that are gone. My only pleasure is to keep these rooms as if my lady were expected here every moment. If the young ladies ever come here, they will find their mother’s rooms just as they were when she last left them. I was born here, and shall die here too, I hope, for I am used to the place, and even its nightly visitants do not frighten me, for they never harm me.”
“Then what I heard last night was real?”
“Real! No. But sure it is that every night the old scene that passed so long ago is acted here again by some strange forms bearing the likeness of the honoured dead. We have heard the sounds for years, but I thought they were meant for us alone, or I should never have chosen that room for your lodging last night.”
At this moment a loud tap at the door and the pleasant accents of the little French maid’s voice recalled us from these old remembrances to the fact of dinner being ready. We rose accordingly, with a last look at the old portraits on the walls. During the meal I learned much more of the old legends of the place, and did not rise to leave till the sun was sinking low beneath the distant hills. As I rode through the deserted park, I could almost fancy I saw the haughty Countess and her beautiful children pacing the broad terrace, or a gleam of the white robe of the Lady Alix as she swept round the garden walks by the side of her cousin.
I know not what has become of the Château des Carlans now, or of the old dame who guided me through it; she is doubtless long since in her grave, for these are the remembrances of an old man. This I can tell you. Never does a dark, stormy night come by, never do the rain and wind beat round the house, but I fancy that I hear the pattering of little weird feet by my door, the gushing of angry waters, the moans of a little child, and the death-screams of the last Countess of Carlan.
THE RESTORATION OF OUR SOIL.
PART I.
The “Times” startled its readers the other day by stating, on the authority of some great names in the domain of chemistry, that the vegetable mould of Europe was gradually becoming exhausted—that our system of farming was, in fact, drying up the source of our daily bread, and that our over-stimulated fields required to revert to their primal condition of wood, and forest, and bog, to bring them back to a wholesome state of fertility. This was tantamount to saying that civilisation was at an end, and that we must look up our old books of costume to see how we should look once more tatooed in woad and draped with skins.
We do not happen to know whether Dr. Cumming has attempted to improve the occasion, by launching forth another of his prophetic visions—possibly not, as the evidence tends to show that man must begin afresh, instead of finally closing his account with nature: be that as it may, the statement was somewhat calculated to attract attention, and one not in the usual run of penny-a-lining.
Fortunately, it happened that not long before this communication was made to the “Times,” the Queen’s printers were issuing what we venture to predict will prove one of the most important Blue Books ever published, to wit, the “Second Report of the Select Committee on Sewage of Towns.” It must have struck every thinking mind with wonder, that while our farmers were depending upon the refuse of flocks of birds in the islands of the South Pacific, and upon the bleaching bones gathered from distant battle-fields,—the refuse of man himself lay decomposing beneath his feet in great cities, and giving forth exhalations which poisoned him in his own household. “Surely,” the reflecting man
