conversation. But Mrs. Ruttan—from whom I got the story—saw that from time to time he glanced furtively into the hall, and finally half rose from his seat, his face white, his limbs trembling.

“Doctor Langtry!” was her startled exclamation. “Are you ill? Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh,” he said shortly, “it is only a momentary faintness. I shall be all right presently. The fatigue of the journey must have unstrung me. I will trouble you to get me a glass of water, and then I think I will return to the hotel.”

He drank the water, and rose to go. But when near the front door, he turned to Mrs. Ruttan, and said:

“I don’t believe I have asked after your daughter. I trust she is well?”

“She is quite well, thank you. I put her to bed just before you came in.”

With his hand on the knob of the door, Doctor Langtry again paused irresolutely.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he asked, “I wish you would go up-stairs and make sure she is all right now.”

Wondering at his request and at his manner, Mrs. Ruttan complied, and presently returned to report that the child was sleeping peacefully. Doctor Langtry bowed with an air of obvious relief, bade her good night, and left the house. But next day, after he had transacted his business, and was about to start for Toronto, he said to Mr. Ruttan, who had accompanied him to the train:

“Ruttan, if your little girl should happen to fall ill while away from home, go to her at once, and take Mrs. Ruttan with you, even if you have no reason to feel that the illness is serious.”

Mr. Ruttan laughed.

“Of course we would go to her. You may be sure of that. But why—”

“Ask me no questions,” said Doctor Langtry, “but bear my request in mind if the occasion should arise.”

Within a very short time the child, visiting an aunt in a near-by town, was taken ill, failed rapidly, and died almost before her parents, who had been hastily telegraphed for, could reach her bedside. Doctor Langtry’s warning immediately recurred to them, and they wrote him, beseeching an explanation.

“The reason I was anxious about your little girl,” he then told them, “was because the night I was sitting with Mrs. Ruttan I saw an angel enter the hall, pass up the stairs, and return, carrying the child in its arms.”

But the kind of ghost most frequently seen is that which appears not before but immediately after, or coincidental with, a death. Its purpose is not to give warning of impending tragedy, but to convey the news of a tragedy already consummated. There are thousands of instances of this sort, so well authenticated as to compel credence. Not long ago an interesting case was reported to me by a gentleman living in Burlington, Vermont, the nephew of the lady—a Mrs. Hazard of Newport, Rhode Island—who saw the ghost.

She was ill at the time, and under the care of a trained nurse. One afternoon, her physician having allowed her to sit up for a couple of hours, she was seated in a chair by the side of her bed, when the nurse noticed her open wide her eyes and turn her head as if following the movements of some one. Then she heard her say, in a tone of surprise:

“Hello! Hello! There he goes! There he goes!”

As far as the nurse could see, nobody was in the room with them. But, not wishing to alarm her patient, she merely asked:

“Who is it, Mrs. Hazard?”

“Chet Keech. But he doesn’t see me. And now he’s gone.”

Later in the day the nurse mentioned the incident to Mrs. Hazard’s daughter, asking her if she knew anybody by the name of Chet Keech.

“Why, certainly I do,” was the reply. “He is my cousin, and lives in Danielson, Connecticut.”

That day Chet Keech had died at Danielson, as a letter informed the Hazards next morning.

Consider also this statement[3] by the Reverend C. C. McKechnie, a Scotch clergyman:

“I was about ten years of age at the time, and had for several years been living with my grandfather, who was an elder in the Kirk of Scotland and in good circumstances. He was very much attached to me and often expressed his intention of having me educated for a minister in the Kirk. Suddenly, however, he was seized with an illness which in a couple of days proved mortal.

“At the time of his death, and without my having any apprehension of his end, I happened to be at my father’s house, about a mile off. I was leaning in a listless sort of way against the kitchen table, looking upward at the ceiling and thinking of nothing in particular, when my grandfather’s face appeared to grow out of the ceiling, at first dim and indistinct, but becoming more and more complete until it seemed in every respect as full and perfect as I had ever seen it.

“It looked down upon me, as I thought, with a wonderful expression of tenderness and affection. Then it disappeared, not suddenly but gradually, its features fading and becoming dim and indistinct, until I saw nothing but the bare ceiling. I spoke at the time of what I saw to my mother, but she made no account of it, thinking, probably, it was nothing more than a boyish vagary. But in about fifteen or twenty minutes after seeing the vision, a boy came running breathless to my father’s with the news that my grandfather had just died.”

Even more remarkable was the experience of an Illinois physician, Doctor J. S. W. Entwistle, a resident of one of the Chicago suburbs. Hurrying one morning to catch a train Doctor Entwistle saw approaching him an acquaintance, once well-to-do, who had ruined himself by drink. Glancing at him as they met, the physician noticed that his clothing was torn and his face bruised, and that there was a cut under one eye. He noticed, too, that the other kept looking steadily at him with a “woe-begone, God-forsaken expression.” Had he not been in such a hurry, he would have stopped and spoken to him, but as it was he passed him with a nod.

At the station Doctor Entwistle met his brother-in-law, and said, while the train was drawing in:

“Oh, by the way, I just saw Charlie M., and he was a sight. He must have been on a terrible tear.”

“I wonder what he’s doing in town, anyway?” commented the brother-in-law.

“I suppose he was going to see his wife.”

“Not a bit of it. She won’t have him around.”

Then the subject was dropped, and nothing more was said about it until after they had reached Chicago. Both men, as it happened, had business at the Grand Pacific Hotel and went directly there from the train. They were met by a mutual friend, who had a copy of the Chicago Tribune in his hand.

“Hello,” he greeted them. “Did you know that Charlie M. is dead? Here is a notice in the paper, stating that his body is at the morgue. He was killed in a saloon fight. The paper hasn’t got the name quite right, but from the description it’s Charlie, sure enough.”

“But he can’t be dead,” said Doctor Entwistle, aghast, “for it was only a few minutes ago that I met him on the street in Englewood.”

Nevertheless, it turned out that Charlie M. was dead, and that his body had been taken to the morgue several hours before Doctor Entwistle thought he saw him in the Chicago suburb. Moreover, on inquiry it was learned that the clothes worn by him when he was killed and the marks on his face “tallied in