'But what has happened about the ghost, Mr. Sweat? You never told us anything about it. Did you ever see it?' asked one of the listeners in a disappointed tone. 'Oh, I forgot; no, that was rather tragic. _Sir Rupert Brodie never appeared again_, not even in the spare bedroom; he seemed offended. Eventually his portrait was sent up to London, where Mr. Lionel Cust pointed out that it could not have been painted until after Vandyck's death, at which time Sir Rupert was only ten years old. Indeed, there was some uncertainty whether the picture represented Sir Rupert at all. Mr. Bowyer Nichols found fault with the costume, which belonged to an earlier date prior to Sir Rupert's birth. Colonel Brodie never recovered from the shock. He resides chiefly at Harrogate. Gradually the servants all gave notice, and Hootawa ceased to attract Americans. Poor Flora! I ought to have remembered my promise; but the habit was too strong in me. Sir Oliver Lodge, I believe, has an explanation for the non-appearance of the phantom after the events I have described. He regards it as a good instance of _bypsychic duality_--the fortuitous phenomenon by which spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent. But I am only an art critic, not a physicist.' _To_ HERBERT HORNE, ESQ. THE ELEVENTH MUSE. In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a publisher's hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became publisher's reader and adviser. It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,' and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the 'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. 'Bad Taste in All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook--the skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.