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10 I said, inexpressibly refreshed with the allusion to the thrilling Vehm-Gericht. "Tell me the whole story quickly, for

I am curious as a child." Ah! that indispensable Vehmic Council—true grammar-school in which the genius of Radcliffe and Ainsworth was formed—was there ever a contrivance so admirably adapted for pleasantly crisping the scalp and icing the veins! I am not ashamed to say that even in these latter years of mine there are certain stormy evenings when I draw forth the coals over the hearth, practice my geomancy, lock out all interlopers, and invoke the powerful Wizard of the North. He plunges me into a dream that is the very acme of sweet terror: a voluptuous swimming sensation overcomes me as my bed, in whose integrity I should else where have perfect faith, sinks down, down, down, fathoms deep. The damps of dungeons are around me: around me also are black and awful forms, from one of which a solemn voice proceeds, asking if I know where I am. I am drilled in my lesson: "I believe that I am before the Unknown or Secret Tribunal called the Vehm-Gericht."

"Then are you aware," answers the judge, "that you would be safer if you were suspended by the hair over the abyss of Schaffhausen?"

I enjoy it immensely, for I have recognized the voice, slightly broken with inward laughter, of the Wizard himself. I know perfectly well that he cannot afford to lose a hero in the very middle of the second volume, and I know, too, that he is a dear old hypocrite of a mediæval, with a mask of terror and a heart of butter. "Now, by my halidom!" says the great Vehmic Wizard in his finest chest tones, "mockest thou me, caitiff? Off with him, then, to the profoundest bastiles of Breisach!"

And there I am, on a sheaf of fresh theatrical straw, with a bottomless pit in the floor, in which I can see the subterranean scene-shifters. And my name is not Paul Hemming, but Arthur Philipson, and I hear footsteps. They come, they come, the murderers! O Lady of Mercy! and O gracious Heaven! forgive my transgressions! And when the footsteps approach, there, robed in angelic white muslin, is Anne of Geierstein. "Can these things be?" I cry fatuously; "and has she really the powers of an elementary spirit?" And she, taking my hand, wafts me forth, as blissfully and easily as would a morning dream, into the daylight.

"I knew she was coming," observes the Wizard at my elbow, "and that was the reason I dumped you there."

When, however, I examined the underground portions of the Neues Schloss at Baden-Baden, I found the relics remaining there endued with a ferocious realism that took away my confidence.

Sylvester Berkley in evening-dress—