England orthodoxy; and she replied, "What was right and wrong in old times, is right and wrong now, Isabella."

"Don't preach, Bessie-I will venture all the harm of going to Effie's; and you may lay the sin at my door;" and with her usual independent, fear-nought air, she turned into a shady lane that led by a cross-cut to "Aunt Katy's garden,"-a favourite resort of the citizens for rural recreations. The Chatham-street theatre has since occupied the same spot-that theatre is now a church. Isabella quickened Bessie followed most unwillingly. "Miss Belle," cried out Jupiter, "I must

her pace.

detest, in your ma's name, against your succeeding farther."

"The tiresome old fool!"

With this excla

mation on her lips, Isabella turned round, and

drawing her person up to the height of woman

hood, she added, “I shall go just as far as I please, Jupe-follow me; if anybody is scolded it shall be me, not you. I wish mamma," she

continued, pursuing her way,

"would not send

Jupe after us,-just as if we were two babies in

leading-strings."

"I would not go a step farther for the world,

if he were not with us," said Bessie.

"And pray, what good would he do us if there were danger-such a desperate coward as

he is?"

"He is a man, Isabella."

“He has the form of one ;—Jupe,” she called out (the spirit of mischief playing about her arch mouth), pointing to a slight elevation, called Gallows Hill, where a gibbet was standing, "Jupe, is not that the place where they hung the poor creatures who were concerned in the negro-plot?"

"Yes, miss, sure it is the awful place!" and he mended his pace, to be as near as might be to the young ladies.

"Did not some of your relations suffer there, Jupiter ?"

"Yes, miss, two of my poster'ty-my grandmother and aunt Venus."

Isabella repressed a smile, and said, with unaffected seriousness, "It was a shocking business, Bessie-a hundred and fifty poor wretches sacrificed, I have heard papa say. Is it true, Jupe, that their ghosts walk about here, and have been seen many a time when it was so dark you could not discern your hand before your face?"

"I dare say, Miss Belle. Them that's hung onjustly always travels."

"But how could they be seen in such darkness?" “'Case, miss, you know ghosts have a light in their anterior, just like lanterns."

Have they? I never understood it beforewhat a horrid cracking that gibbet makes! Bless us! and there is very little wind."

"That makes no distinctions, miss; it begins as the sun goes down, and keeps it up all night. Miss Belle, stop one minute-don't go across the hill-that is right in the ghost-track!"

“Oh don't, for pity's sake, Isabella," said

Bessie, imploringly.

“Hush, Bessie, it is the shortest way, and " (in a whisper) "I want to scare Jupe. Jupe, it seems to me there is an odd hot feel in the ground here."

“There sarten is, miss, a very onhealthy

feeling."

"And, my goodness! Jupiter, don't you feel a very, very slight kind of trembling—a shake-or a roll, as if something were walking in the earth, under our feet?"

"I do, and it gets worser and worser, every step."

"It feels like children playing under the bed, and hitting the sacking with their heads.”

Oh, Lord, miss-yes-it goes bump, bump, against my feet."

By this time they had passed to the further side of the hill, so as to place the gibbet between them and the western sky, lighted up with one of those brilliant and transient radiations, that sometimes immediately succeed the sun's setting, diffusing a crimson glow, and outlining the objects relieved against the sky with light red. Our young heroine, like all geniuses, knew how to seize a circumstance. "Oh, Jupe," she exclaimed, “look, what a line of blood is drawn round the gibbet!"

"The Lord have marcy on us, miss!"

66

And, dear me! I think I see a faint shadow