Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/574

 The finding of the body amongst the drowned, however, was so carefully concealed from her that, even on the day of the funeral, she was unaware of it. What followed?

That night when locking up, as was her wont, she peered out of the cottage door into the darkness beyond, and there, to her amazement, she saw Frank, her long lost Frank, as she had so often before seen him, mounted on his favourite colt. Turning in his saddle he addressed her in his old familiar voice. He shouted to her to mount beside him, and as he did so leant forward to receive her. In a moment she had leapt into his arms and clasped him about the neck the better to secure her seat. And then—hey, presto!—they were off at a breakneck pace before she could realise the horror of the situation: she was in the clammy embrace of a spectre horseman mounted on a phantom horse which was galloping at full speed towards the graveyard of that same old church where their marriage should have been solemnised—the ghost of her drowned love hurrying off with her to the spot which had that day closed over his mortal remains. Happily, according to this quaint old Cornish legend, "The village blacksmith intercepted them, and succeeded, by seizing her dress as she was being hurried past him, in saving her from being buried alive with the sprite of Lenine;" though it really mattered very little after all, as she only survived for two or three days from the horrors of that grim night ride.

Inclined as I am to vary as far as possible place and period, my next uncanny revelation shall concern the eighteenth century, when George the First was King. It is of two staunch college chums who, at about the same age, joined his Majesty's service. Their military careers, however, were destined to have very different issues. One having joined a fighting regiment did prodigies of valour on foreign service for his King and country, being ultimately killed in the thick of the fight, while the other, in a home regiment, wasted his substance in the wildest profligacy. Now the young hero who had fallen so gloriously was found to have bequeathed to his old friend the sword with which he had won so honourable a name, enjoining him at the same time to prove himself, as a soldier, worthy of the inheritance. Years passed. That sword—now rusting in its scabbard—was suspended with other curios over the mantelshelf of the man who was, as we have seen, a soldier by name only. It was past midnight. This jaded roué having gambled