"Did you not bury me here alive, and close the opening to my tomb, and
go away and charge everybody with my murder?" asked the spectre,
bitterly. "O, uncle, hard of head and paralyzed in recollection! is it
any good excuse for sacrificing my poor life, that, in your cloven
state, you put me down a cellar, like a pan of milk, and then could not
remember where you'd put me? And was it noble, then, to go to her whom
you supposed had been my chosen bride, and offer wedlock to her on your
own account?"

"I was acting as y'r-executor, EDWIN," explained the uncle. "I did
ev'thing forth' besht."

"And does the sight of me fill you with no terror, no remorse, unfeeling
man?" groaned the ghost.

"Yeshir," answered Mr. BUMSTEAD, with sudden energy. "Yeshir. I'm
r'morseful on 'count of th' umbrella. Who-d'-y'-lend-'t-to?"

It is an intellectual characteristic of the more advanced degrees of the
clove-trance, that, while the tranced individual can perceive objects,
even to occasional duplexity, and hear remarks more or less distinctly,
neither objects nor remarks are positively associated by him with any
perspicuous idea. Thus, while the Ritualistic organist had a blurred
perception of his nephew's conversational remains, and was dimly
conscious that the tone of the supernatural remarks addressed to himself
was not wholly congratulatory, he still presented a physical and moral
aspect of dense insensibility.

Momentarily nonplussed by such unheard-of calmness under a ghostly