Would some antiquary of a hundred years hence penetrate this closet, make prey of Miss Aubrey's remains, and carry a joint of her finger, a bit of her watchchain, and a malachite button from her gown, as treasures for his museum? At such direful thoughts the usually lively and dashing Prudence Aubrey beat the immoveable door until her little fists were bruised, and screamed until her musical tones were hoarse as the croak of a raven. We, not being imprisoned with our heroine, may go down stairs, and hear the party wondering mildly over her disappearance, concluding she had found it time to hasten to meet her friends; remarking that Prudence "did such singular things;" Mrs. Pils gently wishing that "she didn't do so;" and one and all leaving the Manor Hall, and going home in a comfortable state of mind.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Peony sat on the doorstep, to darn a huge black stocking, and her thoughts partaking of the lugubrious hue of her work, she mused thus: "Well! may be that young lady did go off home alone. But I have heard of a ghost in Manor Hall, that spirits off people to the vault, and buries 'em. So now! there's ghosts and ghostesses mayhap, and more queer doings in this world than people like to make mention of. I heard a deal about this place before I came here, but I must say for Manor Hall, that I never saw nor knew a thing in it out of the common line. If I had, I'd leave. O yes, I hope she's all right; I expect she is. I'd know it, if I saw it." Meanwhile, good Mrs. Peony was careful to keep on her outer step in the sunshine, and in hearing of passers-by, until her husband came from work, and she had then to rattle among her pots and pans, getting supper.

All this time Prudence was in durance vile, above stairs.

Shut up for two hours in a darkness like the ninth plague of Egypt, Prudence had exhausted herself by calling aloud, and by pushing against the door. She now sat with her head on her knees, and through her excited brain hummed all that she had ever read or heard that bore on her present condition. The old song of

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The misletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch graced the old oak wall," wailed in her head like a dirge. The beloved legend of childhood, of Fatima the venturesome, and Sister Anna watching on the parapet for help, came to her in every minute particular. Miss Aubrey's sister Anna, instead of looking for aid, was doubtless now discoursing sweet music on her piano, and edifying her guests with the strains of

"On yonder rock reclining."

But even in her misery, Prudence was ready to be just, and admitted that this negligence was rather her own fault than her sister's.

Prudence had read of the Waldenses in their famous cave; indeed she had meant at some day to go to Switzerland and break a bit of rock from that memorable spot; but she was fain to consider herself worse off than these heroes of the faith, because they were many—she was alone, no one to solace her in misfortune. Then, there was the account of a hundred prophets in a cavern, in the land of Israel; but Obadiah visited them, bringing food; no one would come to her. People had been lost in the catacombs; others had wandered into the Mammoth Cave and never came back; some had been cast on desert islands and had met worse luck than Alexander Selkirk; but was it not far more bitter to be imprisoned in a dark closet, in reach of help, and yet beyond the possibility of it; to count one's days and know them few, each more wretched than the one before, and ending in a horrible death; to die of thirst, even while hearing rain patter on the shingles; to choke for air while the winds were soughing about within three feet of you; to be hidden from sunlight while it burned the roof above your head; to starve within a furlong of waving corn and blushing fruits!

Misery made Prudence dull and half unconscious for a while. Then she roused herself and considered that she must have been at least twenty-four hours in the closet. It was time to do something; she would not die without an effort for freedom. She stood up,

and reaching high and stooping low, felt over the walls of her prison. She spent some minutes trying to wrench the shelf from its place, but could not move it, as it was so far over her head; the baseboard proved equally obstinate. There was a nail in the wall, which, with a feverish desire to do something, she worked out and put in her pocket, a receptacle where she was wont to store away small possessions, in the fashion of a school-boy. The nail clinked on her tile. In these two hours the value of that curiosity was wonderfully lessened. Another long fit of despondency indulged in, lying on the floor. O for Tom Walford, that famous man, who could penetrate into the heart of an Indian mound and unearth a skeleton! Why had she not married Tom? Then she would not have been imprisoned like this, with no

one to care for it.

Ah, she had hugged her idea of independence and self-sufficiency; she had prated of women's rights; what use of claiming women's rights for a small muscled creature, who could not get out of a closet when she was shut in!

What had this closet been made for? Was it built for the timely restraint of refractory servants or children? or had it been predestined and made, two centuries ago, solely for the destruction of Prudence Aubrey, maiden antiquarian? Brother John, your warnings have all

come true.

Then, as drowning people think of everything, Prudence thought of her precious museum, about to be scattered to the four winds, no one mindful of its value. She had not even time to make a will, bequeathing it to Tom Walford. But what would Tom do with it? He would go and marry some yellow-curled creature who had no soul for antiquities, and Tom's romping children would tear her treasures to pieces. The little Hindoo gods would get their heads broken; the bones would be scattered; the remnants of mummies would go into the dust-bin; the Aztec remains would be built up in play-houses; the papers and parchments of the days of Elizabeth would be tied over the mouths of preserve jars! She must

make another effort. Prudence was as given to efforts as Mrs. Chick.

She started up and went about her prison on tiptoe, feeling the walls. Why, here was a hole, far up in a corner where a bit of plaster had been broken. Prudence thrust in her hand and it went against a chimney. She made her boots and dress into a bundle that she might raise herself a few inches by standing on it. Thus elevated, she broke off scraps of the wall and flung them down by the chimney space in the partition. Then she got three bits of loose brick, and dropped two of them, rattling as they went, every sound waking a thought of calling attention, and so escaping. The third morsel of brick she kept, and for half an hour hammered the chimney monotonously; it sounded like spiritrappings, and Prudence, as she hammered, kept thinking of those manifestations; satisfied that no spirit ever had such need or right to rap as she herself.

Finding the hammering ineffectual, Prudence laid her quarter of a brick on the floor and sat down to rest, and to anthametize the sound sleep of toilers like Mr. and Mrs. Peony.

Too tired to reach up to that hole again very soon, Prudence then took the brick and, as she sat, beat a tattoo on walls, floor and base-board.

She

Then she had an inspiration. leaped up, clasped her hands into the broken place, by main strength pulled herself up until her mouth lay at the opening, and then she shrieked down it, varying her screams, trying every note in the gamut of agony and despair. What sounds were then in that chimney! It was enough to terrify even Prudence herself. A pack of starved wolves on the scent; a leash of sleuth-hounds in full cry; a grand chorus of all the owls that ever hooted; a full orchestra of asses; the bellowings of Polyphemus; the unearthly noises of the harpies; limbo let loose; the black air full of demons, drawn back to the abyss by some infinite decree; all these seemed set free in that wall and chimney, evoked by the larum of Miss Aubrey.

Prudence might have been willing, in

the circumstances, to pursue this study of acoustics indefinitely, but she was limited by the failing of her strength. There came a moment when she could no longer hang on the wall, shrilling into echoing space, and she dropped exhausted upon the floor. Now she became stoical in the excess of her misery. She placed her bundle for a pillow, laid herself down, decently composed her clothing, and folded her arms over her chest; she had, for the time, made up her mind to die, and she meant to do it as soon as possible.

But death does not come obediently at the beck of strong young people, who have lived moderately, kept good hours, had a hobby to ride, and have ridden it in the open air.

Mental and bodily exhaustion delivers such happy persons over to a semi-consciousness which they may deem precursor of death, but which is really nature's restorative process.

As Prudence lay thus. she lost knowledge of her present position; she was in the Manor Hall, but no longer in the dark closet. The partitions had melted away, she had the range of the house, it was night time, and all the spirits that throng old houses and are invisible in the day, were out in full power. The house walls became transparent; one could, at a glance, see all that passed without and within. Round and around the mansion went a sturdy figure in a blouse, leather breeches and wooden shoes, with a cap on his head. He bent down, laying his thick horny hand in the print in the bricks-it filled them exactly; then he laughed, and with marvellous ease turned the imbedded bricks, and lo, another hand print was on the under side, and he laid his fingers in it, chuckling, and left that side uppermost for the coming day. Thus this ancient brickmaker had been preserving traces of himself for two centuries. Prudence wondered if they did so at the Pyramids, and what singular multitudes thus thronged the mighty cone of Cheops.

A little maiden of eight summers, an old-style child, in a stiff gold-colored brocade, with high red-heeled slippers,

tripped along the walk, and stopping at the woodbine, touched its root. Then under her fingers it dwindled into a little slip just planted, and before her sweet eyes grew swiftly as Jonah's gourd, and draped the southwest corner of the Manor Hall. Then the little maiden returned to an upper room, laid by the gold brocade and the high-heeled slippers, clad herself all in white, and with a lily in her hand went meekly over the hillside and down to the vault doorway. There some gray-haired retainers in black laid her in a niche, walled up her grave, and filled the vault with sobs; but there was singing in the air overhead.

After this there stood at the vault door a tall dame in black, who had forgotten how to smile. She visited much the holly tree, and gathered its thorny leaves, and berries like blood drops, valuing them more than flowers, and used them to deck her room on Good Friday. This woman in black had no heart; she had buried it with the little maiden who planted the woodbine; and by-and-by those retainers unsealed the burial place, and laid her in with the small maid, and there were no sobs in the vault, but the singing went on overhead.

Then all the mansion blazed with wax candles; there was a feast spread in the dining saloon, and guests crowded in the parlors; the brick-paved hall was full of gentlemen wearing swords, cocked hats, wide shirt frills, and very gay attire. An upper room opened and a sweet perfume of many rare essences stole out, precursor of a most lovely bride, who outshone all the maidens who escorted her. Prudence saw how her rich lace veil swept to her feet; how her train was lined with white velvet; how she had necklace, zone, bracelets, and ear-jewels of pearls set in yellow gold, and on her bosom glowed a diamond, as if a star had lost its way and taken refuge there.

Prudence noticed how the prim garden. was illuminated; how the guests feasted, danced and congratulated. She wondered if this woman's future would be as bright as her bridal.

She had time to see. Phantom nursemaids began to carry spirit babies about

the house; the bride, grown older and more demure, put costly caps on these baby-heads, gold chains on their necks, and gold bands in their sleeves; gave them coral and silver rattles to play with, kissed them, and was proud of them. But the babies, one and another, went through the garden, over the hillside, and nestled down under the grass, seeming to court rather the brown earth than their mother's bosom.

By-and-by a pair of quaint twin babies came; had no drawings to the hillocks so near at hand; trotted about merrily, grew and grew, were man and woman at last, and when the whilom bride and groom sat wearing cap and spectacles at the side of the wide fire-place, these younger two brought home one a wife, and the other a husband. But by the time another spectral nurse and babe appeared, the strong young man was carried in, wearing a blue coat with a bullet hole through the breast, and making no tarrying, was taken out the further door, and hidden in the vault beneath the hill. Prudence saw the heroes of old time, the men who projected and established the Republic of the West. She heard them utter fears which were never realized, and hopes which have become realities. She saw also plenty of redcoated men, who fought very well for their king, but not so well as men who were spurred on by absolute certainty that they must conquer or die.

Under the oldest trees, wandering on the hills, regarding the Manor Hall with a melancholy but not an angry gaze, she saw also the lithe figure of a famous Indian chief; he loved his paint and feathers, his bow and arrows, and all his wild life and attire; but he yielded little by little to the example and persuasions of his pale-faced friends. He brought them game for their table; he smoked his pipe by their fire; he looked with tenderness on their children. He, too, was carried with all due respect, and buried in the family vault with those whose name he had assumed.

And now, as the elfin hours of their reign grew shorter, these shades of the past crowded faster and closer about the

scenes of their dwelling in the flesh. Each spectre in his garb and act revealed the darling ambition, and lived the crowning moment of his life. Silks rustled on the stairs, spurs rung along the paved ways; scholars studied unreal books; mock wines glowed in impish glasses; the venerable furniture was painted on the air; and one saw the dark mahogany, the gilded claw feet, the polished lacquering; even the stiff Dutch pictures lingered in spectral color on the walls.

Up and down, over the garden, through the woods, into the bed-chambers, and even into the closet where Prudence lay in semi-trance, they came, caring nothing for her.

Miss Aubrey saw that instead of being built and reserved peculiarly as a pitfall and trap for herself, this closet had been the rubbish corner of the house. Old books lay on the shelf, old shoes were piled in the distant angle; tarnished coats and gowns hung on the wall; boxes of unfashionable hats and bonnets; canes, whose owners had renewed their youth by passing through yon vault, and now trod a world where they needed props no longer-all these were put in this closet; and here young people and children came to ferret for garb in which to perform charades and tableaux. These goblin juveniles never touched the real bundle under Miss Aubrey's head, but they trampled over and on her, without seeing or oppressing her; and they heaped the garments they were assorting over her, and Prudence could smell the faint odors of musk, camphor, and red cedar, in which they had been kept. She heard these young folk making love, and she observed with a twinge of conscience, that the maidens were more gracious than she had been to Tom.

Now at this period, all unknown to Prudence, the tip of the Manor Hall chimneys caught the first faint streak of the summer dawn, and on a neighboring barn roof

"The cock his crested helmet bent,

And down his querulous challenge sent."

At once the gray-beard retainers who

waited at the vault dropped their shadowy spades and picks, and melted away: the singing grew mute in the air overhead, the choir had been drawn upward to the fading stars.

The garden settled to its loneliness and decay; the figures in the open air ceased their ghostly toils and vanished. The walls of the Manor House resumed their pristine impenetrability; the haunted halls and chambers grew vacant and silent; sprite after sprite departed, the house was like a hearth where the coals have died out, and even the ashes have been swept away; it was lonely, cold and still, a deserted habitation.

But though it took but a little time to accomplish this spiritual hegira, it was done gradually. The rooms were dismantled and shut up, the supernatural tenants went one by one, leaving it abandoned, just as it had really been left, by slow stages, by marked degrees; and as the last ghosts went out they went diverse ways, and a dark cloud filled all the house.

The darkness, the chill, the strange silence startled Prudence like an electric shock. She leaped to her feet, feeling that she had been imprisoned in the Manor Hall a full week, and expecting to find herself wasted, feeble, famished. She was hungry, that was certain; she was also frightened, but calmer than when she was first shut up. Being cold, she put on her dress and shoes. Then she quietly considered what to do.

People cast on a desert island have always a ship to supply them with the comforts and luxuries of life. They have gold and gems to awake the avarice of the reader of their fortunes, and tropic fruits which cause every one to wish to be shipwrecked.

Prudence in the Manor Hall had only her pocket to rely upon; but thanks to her unknown fairy godmother, that pocket was inexhaustible.

Prudence in the darkness unloaded her pocket, and felt its contents.

Two worm-eaten books.

She laid them on the floor.
That fatal tile.

She put it upon the books. The broken knife.

That would do to wipe her eyes, if she had time to weep.

Three letters from poor Tom Walford. O dear!

A box, a metal box, with a roughness at either end. A box of matches! Joy, joy! what a thing is a pocket.

"I will be systematic," said Prudence. "I will sharpen this knife well, ready for use, on the rough side of my tile, and on the sole of my boot. When I am ready for work, I will light a match, and burn one of those envelopes of Tom's letters. I will twist it tight, and it will burn the longer. I must also be careful not to get on fire. How frightful to burn to death in this closet! I have three envelopes, and I can burn the letters, too, if need be. Tom won't care. I'll treat Tom right well if ever I get out of this!"

All this while she was sharpening the broken knife and twisting the envelope into lighters, and now finding herself prepared for work she struck a match and ignited her humble torch. A careful examination of the door showed where the latch was screwed upon the outer side. Prudence thought if she could cut through here, even a narrow slip, she could lift up the latch by means of the knife-blade or a hair-pin.

"I'll never go anywhere without a good sharp pocket-knife, after this," mutterred Miss Aubrey, with a loving reminiscence of several such edge tools lying in her trunk. She fixed her hard twisted bit of paper in the crack of the door, and it lighted her dimly as she worked. When it was out, she toiled on in the dark for some minutes, then sacrificed another envelope. The door was thick and hard, the knife wretchedly dull, and the hand that wielded it far from skilful.

As Prudence began to work for her deliverance, she peeped at her watch; it was four o'clock.