with these things loved darkness better than light, because it cost less. I should here explain that Thursdays were the "guest" nights of my regiment at that time, and on this evening the regimental band had as usual been playing on the open space just outside, fronting the mess-room windows. It must have been past eleven o'clock when I reached barracks; and although most of the outsiders who were allowed in to hear the music on such occasions were gone, I noticed two or three still waiting about. One in particular, a remarkably tall man in a long dark cloak, and with some sort of hood over his head like a monk's cowl, was standing under one of the mess windows with his back to me. I sauntered into my room, lit a cigar, and came out again, to muse in the quiet moonlight over the "Tenebræ " and the "Stazione." By this time the loiterers were all gone except the tall cloaked man, who appeared to have never moved or changed his position since I saw him first. The open windows of the messroom were still aglow, and through the boughs of a row of lank stunted trees along the enclosure wall one could see the distant twinkling lights of the town.

Something in the appearance of this solitary shrouded figure at tracted and fixed my attention. To be so attired in a warm balmy night like this, in a semi-tropical climate, seemed peculiar. And I had already been struck with his phenomenal stature, contrasted with those who had been standing beside him. Who could the man be, and what on earth was he waiting there for? It crossed my mind that this must be either one of the dominoed incogniti who had been following in the Passion procession, or else one of the Capuchins from a neigh

bouring monastery; but a friar would hardly stroll in to listen to a military band, and then stand stock-still alone under the windows of the officers' mess. With the momentary passing thought came the sound of pretty loud talking, and occasionally a laugh, from the lit-up anteroom opposite, where it was plain some of our fellows must be, probably engaged at whist, loo, or some other card game. Why I cannot tell, but along with a feeling of indefinable repulsion towards him, an impulse seized me to watch the muffled stranger closely, and at the same time an awakening consciousness that I had better walk straight over and ask the man what he wanted there at that time of night. As my gaze fastened itself on the motionless figure, whose head seemed in the bright moonlight to be bent a little to one side in an intent listening attitude, I became conscious of a kind of chill and numbness creeping through my limbs, with that horrible sense of inability to move forward one occasionally experiences in dreams when something dreadful is going to happen which one wants to avert. Yes, whoever the man was, most assuredly he must be watching and waiting and listening for something or somebody in the mess-room, with that strained intentness yet absolute quiescence of posture! But why this vehement and altogether unaccountable foreboding of impending evil borne in upon me?

These bethinkings, however, were all the work of a few seconds, when, with eyes still riveted on the mysterious watcher, I heard several voices within the room calling out in excited tones as though some altercation were going on. One voice above all the others came with a kind of strident sharpness

through the open window, in which it was easy to recognise D's hard and distinct accents. I seem to hear the words rasping out now as I write. "I tell you I dealt myself the ace of spades;" then another voice, young N-'s, "I'll take my oath you didn't," and then a terrible imprecation from D which I will not repeat, invoking the Prince of Darkness to the ruin of his soul and body if what he had stated was not the truth.

As the last words struck on my ear the tall cloaked figure made an instantaneous movement, leaped up with a light swift spring to the window-sill he was standing under, and disappeared through the muslin curtains into the room, for I was unable to see farther into it from my position. Another instant, and an ear-piercing scream rang out,- —a harsh appalling cry as of mingled pain, rage, and terror, from one in dire extremity-and to my horror and utter amazement he in the cloak reappeared at the window with D-- gripped in his arms, and half slung over one shoulder, apparently struggling desperately. One instant both faces were visible in the moonlight, D's ghastly and convulsed, the other set back in its sombre hood and covered with a black domino, from the eyelets of which I was near enough to catch, as I fancied, a lightningflash of fiendish malignancy and exultation. Ere I could collect my bewildered senses sufficiently to rush across to stop them, which I did a moment later, both men had vanished round an angle of the building. After them I rushed, shouting to the gate-sentry to alarm the guard, but on reaching the rear of the block not a soul was in sight. Out turned the guard, and telling the sergeant

to take a file and search the enclosure for two men fighting, I ran round to the mess-room. Meanwhile, and before I could reach the entrance-door to the mess, the bell inside was ringing out peal after peal, and an officer came tearing out full tilt, nearly knocking me down. "What is it?" I burst out. "Where's C- (our regimental doctor); "is he in his quarters?" was the simultaneous counter question, and away he rushed towards the quarter where Dr C was located. I ran into the anteroom, along with one or two of the mess-waiters, helterskelter. And what a sight inside! There, huddled in a group, with pale scared faces, a whist-table overturned, and a litter of cards strewn all over the floor, were some half-dozen of my comrades of the th, stooping over the prostrate form of D- who lay motionless, with lips apart, eyeballs fixed and staring, his head lying back, supported by one of our fellows. It was a terrible moment. The surgeon, C▬▬, came in a minute after, tore open D--'s waistcoat and shirt, looked hard at him, knelt down and put his ear to the drawn mouth, felt about the region of the heart, and shook his head. Life was extinct.

As for myself, I could hardly believe my senses. The man I had just seen bodily carried off struggling in the arms of an unknown individual, lying here dead

it seemed an absolute hallucination! I was too taken aback to ask a single question; but as my inquiring eyes went round the circle of assembled officers, I could see on the countenances of all a certain constraint mingled with their horror, but not a syllable was said. It was plain there was a further mystery behind.

D

The remains of the ill-fated were removed to a spare room in the officers' quarters, and there laid out to await official proceedings on the morrow.

It was not till after the funeral that I learned what had caused the uproar and altercation in the mess-room, which immediately preceded the terribly sudden catastrophe of that memorable night. And even at this distance of time, I tell the circumstances with pain and reluctance. D- had dined with the regiment, and after the band had finished playing, he and some half-dozen subalterns sat

down to play vingt-et-un. The stakes were high, and it was remarked that D- turned up a remarkable number of "naturals." N- a not long-joined ensign, had been dealt an ace of spades, and "stood." At the conclusion of the round, D- who was dealing, again showed a "natural," the ace of which proved to be the ace of spades. This, of course, was too much for young N- -, green as he was; and though the tricks of the "heathen Chinee" had not then been sung, the case was manifestly something of the same kind as that worthy's performance. Hence the indignant remonstrance wafted out to my ears in the barrack square, followed by that awful oath. Whereupon, according to some of the party, a momentary gust of air seemed to shake the farther window-sash, and simultaneously the card-table was stirred -it was, they said, like the tremor of a slight earthquake shock – and straightway D- threw his hands up and fell back in his chair, gurgling like one in a fit. The rest I have told, and I will say no more upon this. Which of us is prepared to cast a stone at an erring brother, leastwise when he is gone! Needless to say, the officers of

her Majesty's -th were for long thereafter uncommonly chary of conferring upon outsiders the privilege of honorary membership of their mess. And for many a year the tragic circumstances I have set down, with perhaps somewhat imperfect recollection of minor details, lingered on in the regiment as a kind of tradition, to be talked over on occasions, and amplified in various ways. But as for S- (of whom more presently) and myself, we kept our impressions as far as possible to ourselves, though something about them necessarily leaked out through the guard and sentry I had hailed, and from my original statements concerning the twain I believed I had seen so palpably in the moonlight.

I have never been able to clear up the mystery of this dread tragedy. When the formal inquiry by the military and civil authorities came on, it was elicited from the non-commissioned officer of the night-guard that no person of the description I gave had been seen to enter or leave the barrack precincts. The certified cause of the death was stated to be aneurism, spasm, or something of the heart -what I suppose we should call in common parlance, heart-disease The affair was rather hushed up, in deference to the feelings of D's relatives, one of whom came out to the island shortly afterwards to make inquiries, and settle up the affairs of the deceased.

Those who have read thus far may not unnaturally have explained to themselves what I witnessed in the square as pure imagination, a phantasm of my own brain. And this view I should probably myself have inclined to, but for one circumstance, which I have now to mention. In the

room above mine, and looking out on the square towards the messhouse, was quartered a very dear fellow, rather a favourite with us, although hardly robust enough for the roughing of a soldier's life. Now it happened on this very Thursday evening S, who had been ailing for some time back of Malta fever, was lying on a couch in his room by the open windowthe night being so warm and listening to the band. He was still there when I came into barracks, and when I was arrested by the sight of the tall solitary figure opposite. When, several days after the sad event, I touched on the subject, S― broke in with a very troubled face, and in a serious urgent voice asked, "Did you see the man in the long cloak waiting for him?" Then I knew that whatever extra-vision had been

vouchsafed to me had been shared by him. Ah me! "pale death knocks with equal step," sooner or later, at the door of us all, and S, with nearly every other of my then comrades, has departed to that bourn where "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom"!

As for me, were I to live to the patriarchal age of the oldest of the antediluvians, it would be impossible to obliterate the impressions forced successively upon me on that especially solemn but fatal Thursday. The cathedral service, the torchlight procession and then, in terrible contrast, near about midnight, on the very threshold of a day most sad and sacred of all days to Christendom, the culminating horror of that shrouded one and his victim!