What am I to think? Can it be that the story I have been reading was written by my poor friend here, and under the influence of delirium? Impossible! Besides they all assure me that from the fatal night of his arrival he never left his bed--never put pen to paper. His very directions to have me summoned from England were verbally given during one of those few and brief intervals in which reason seemed partially to resume her sway. Can it then be possible that----? W----? where is he who alone may be able to throw light on this horrible mystery?--No one knows. He absconded, it seems, immediately after the duel. No trace of him exists, nor, after repeated and anxious inquiries, can I find that any student has ever been known in the University of Leyden by the name of Francis Somers. "There are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy!!" * * * * * Father John Ingoldsby, to whose papers I am largely indebted for the Saintly records which follow, was brought up by his father, a cadet of the family, in the Romish faith, and was educated at Douai for the church. Besides the manuscripts now at Tappington, he was the author of two controversial treatises on the connection between the Papal Hierarchy and the Nine of Diamonds. From his well-known loyalty, evinced by secret services to the Royal cause during the Protectorate, he was excepted by name out of the acts against the Papists, became superintendent of the Queen Dowager's chapel at Somerset House, and enjoyed a small pension until his death, which took place in the third year of Queen Anne (1704), at the mature age of ninety-six. He was an ecclesiastic of great learning and piety, but from the stiff and antiquated phraseology which he adopted, I have thought it necessary to modernise it a little: this will account for certain anachronisms that have unavoidably crept in; the substance of his narratives has, however, throughout been strictly adhered to. His hair-shirt, almost as good as new, is still preserved at Tappington,--but nobody ever wears it. THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS. "Tune miser Corvus adeo conscientiæ stimulis compunctus fuit, et execratio eum tantopere excarneficavit, ut exinde tabescere inciperet, maciem contraheret, omnem cibum aversaretur, nec amplius crocitaret: pennæ præterea ei defluebant, et alis pendulis omnes facetias intermisit, et tam macer apparuit ut omnes ejus miserescent." "Tunc abbas sacerdotibus mandavit ut rursus furem absolverent; quo facto, Corvus, omnibus mirantibus, propediem convaluit, et pristinam sanitatem recuperavit." _De Illust. Ord. Cisterc._