receipt, which certainly seemed to be the same now produced, signed " Louis Auguier." The matter was obscure and puzzling. There was, by this time, no question that this large sum of money had somehow come into the possession of Mirabel. He could not, by skill or labor, have realized the hun dredth part of it. No one had been robbed, for the notoriety of the case would at once have produced the loser. If Mirabel had found it (and there were the witnesses who proved the discovery many feet below the surface, in an undisturbed corner of the ter race), who revealed the precious deposit to this poor simple clown? The scale was in clining, slowly and steadily, to the spectral side, when some new and startling evidence appeared. Auguier proved that subsequently to the alleged delivery of the treasure into his hands, Mirabel had declared that it was still concealed in the ground, and had invited his two brothers-in-law from Pertuis to see it. Placing them at a little distance from the haunted spot, he made pretence of digging, but suddenly raising a white shirt, which he had attached to sticks placed crosswise, he rushed towards them, crying out, " The ghost! the ghost! " One of these unlucky persons died from the impressions engen dered by this piece of pleasantry. The sur vivor delivered this testimony. The case now began to look less favorable for the spectre. It was hardly probable that Mirabel would take so unwarrantable a lib erty with an apparition in which he believed, as to represent him, and that for no explain able purpose, in an old white shirt! Was it barely possible that Mirabel was after all a humbug, and that the whole story was a pure fabrication, for the purpose of obtaining dam ages from the well-to-do Auguier? It does not appear to what astute judicial
intellect this not wholly impossible idea pre sented itself. At all events, a new process was decreed, the great object of which was to discover in the first instance how and whence came the money into Mirabel's possession. Under the pressure of this inquiry, the witness Paret was at length brought to con fess, first, that she had never actually be held one coin belonging to the supposed treasure; secondly, that she did not credit one word of Mirabel's story, thirdly, that if she had already deposed otherwise, it was at the earnest entreaty of Mirabel himself. Two experts were then examined as to the alleged receipt. These differed in opinion as to its being in the handwriting of Auguier; but a third being added to the consultation, all three finally agreed that it was a well executed forgery. This, after twenty months, three processes, and the examination of fifty-two witnesses, was fatal to the ghost. He was put out of court. The final decree acquitted Auguier, and condemned Mirabel to the galleys for life, he having been previously submitted to the question. Under the torture Mirabel con fessed that one Etienne and Barthelemy, a declared enemy of Auguier, had devised the spectral fable as a ground for the intended accusation, and, to substantiate the latter, had lent him (for exhibition; the sum of twenty thousand livres. By an after process, Bar thelemy was sentenced to the galleys for life, and the witnesses Deleuil and Fourniere to be hung up by the armpits, in some public place, as false witnesses. So far as records go, this singular case was the last in which, in French law-courts, the question of ghost or no ghost was made the subject of legal argument and sworn testi mony. —Judicial Dramas.
