wanted. He was graceful, free, fast, stylish, and, above all, perfectly gentle-a very family horse.

On the confines of Flushing stands a house about two hundred feet from the road, and surrounded on three sides by a high hedge of arbor-vita. At the front is a court-yard, and what was once a stately entrance, with a carriage-drive round a circle, and a number of noble forest-trees; but the grass has covered the carriage-road, weeds have choked the lawn, and the trees spread their scraggy branches untrimmed and uncared for. The dwelling is large, and has a deep piazza along the entire front; it gives every outward appearance of comfort, but no family has occupied it more than two consecutive months for many years. The house is haunted.

Many years ago an old French lady owned the place, and she had one daughter-a beauty, of course —given to falling in love, equally of course, or she would not have been French-and somewhat undutiful, as the sequel will show. The mother, according to the ordinary Parisian habit, wished to make a good match for her daughter; the latter, according to the universal female habit, wished to select a handsome husband for herself; the mother offered a wealthy and highly respectable "mentor, guide, and friend" of sixty; the young lady chose a dashing,

devil-may-care lover of twenty-five. The parent dismissed the latter, the daughter dismissed the former; the mother threatened to anathematize if she was not obeyed, and, being disobeyed, did something of the kind—what, among gentlemen, would be called "tall swearing." The daughter, who had learned the habits of American children, consented to an elopement with her lover; the time was set, the hour arrived.

It was a bright moonlight night, the seventh of October, in the year eighteen hundred and no matter what; a high wind was blowing, and scattered clouds were driving rapidly across the sky; the young gentleman at the appointed hour stood at the gate with a pair of fast trotters and one of the lightest turnouts of Brewster & Co., of Bond Street, having engaged a clergyman in the city of New York. Time flew by, but he waited in vain. His lady-love had not failed of her promises, however, but, after her mother had retired, and by her loud snoring attested the profundity of her repose, she quietly descended the stairs, opened the front door silently as the expertest of thieves, and stepped upon the piazza. At that moment a heavy cloud passed across the moon, and a fierce gust slammed to the door; fearing that her mother might have been aroused, she groped her way hastily across the piazza, caught the balustrade

of the steps, and-walked off on the wrong side. It was a fall of ten feet; with a wild shriek she pitched head foremost on the bricks of the area.

The lover waited and waited, fearing let suspicions might have been aroused, or resolution have failed; amid the noise of blustering winds and falling leaves he thought he heard a cry of distress, and, at last becoming uneasy, determined to visit his dulcinea's window, and ask her how she did. Tying his horses, he crept quietly along the shady side of the hedge, which was that on the opposite side to her room, as he did not wish to be seen. As soon as he reached the piazza, he followed along under the edge of it till he came to the steps, where he waited for a friendly cloud to conceal his 'movements, when he was compelled to pass outside of them.

The opportunity soon offered, he slipped by, and the cloud cleared away just after he had stumbled on a bundle of clothes, as he supposed, beyond the steps; he turned to look; and there, lying upon her back, staring up to heaven with lack-lustre, wideopen eyes, the crimson stains upon her white forehead telling her fate, stiff, and stark, and cold, lay all that he held dearest in this world. Her lips would never again whisper words of love; her heart had ceased to feel that passion which had proved her

destruction. The lover's cries aroused the house, and brought out the trembling mother to behold her daughter still undisturbed, with the horror of sudden and cruel death upon her unmitigated. And amid the shrieks of the parent and the lamentations of the servants, the maddened lover, who had been attacked with a frenzy that never left him, heaped reproaches, and retaliated with curses on her whose curses seemed in his insanity to have caused this terrible calamity.

Of the parties to this tragedy there were none living in three months; they were buried in adjoining graves, at the request of the mother, who had it done apparently as an atonement. This palliation did not seem to answer, however, for on the seventh of every month, at the hour of eleven, a ghostly figure slips out of the front door, whether it is locked or not, and with a scream falls from the piazza; a male figure suddenly appears rent with agony at its side, and then another female wringing her hands in despair, while the male gesticulates fiercely at her. Such is this veritable history as I have it from the oldest inhabitant, and it is no wonder that people do not like living in a house with such associates.

I do not often use our horse; I am not fond of driving, and have a vivid recollection of the early

accidents with horse-flesh heretofore mentioned; but when it became necessary to buy a pig, my judgment was indispensable, and I was compelled to drive to the place of his residence-which was the haunted house. I did not know that it was haunted, and, being well aware of the decorum that requires the master of the establishment to "tool" his coachman, no matter how much more competent the latter may be, I took the reins, and dashed in grand style along the entrance to the door. Leaving the coachman at the animal's head, I walked to the pig-pen, which was in the rear of the house, and there was soon engrossed in admiring the beautiful little creature that I have already described. Many minutes were devoted to the contemplation of his innumerable fine points, and I was only aroused by the noise of a struggle, shouts for help, and a clatter of hoofs. Instantly running toward the front, I arrived just in time to see the heels of Dandy Jim-for such was the animal's name-disappearing round the corner, and to help my groom, who was lying on his back in the road, upon his feet.

It seemed that the horse had stood perfectly quiet for several minutes, then became uneasy, began to tremble, and turn his head with a wild look over his shoulder. In spite of the efforts of the coachman,