his shoulders, struck off alone into the forest-path light-hearted as a boy, and sure, whatever might happen, of enjoying a fresher and healthier excitement in that journey through the woods of Australia than the dwellers in crowded cities enjoy in all their lives. A MYSTERIOUS HISTORY. Paris, says the _Independence Belge_, the leading journal of Brussels, is now occupied not with politics so much as with ghost stories. At the theatres, the _Vampyre_ and the _Imagier de Harlaem_, feed this appetite for supernatural horrors. Among other incidents of that kind, says the _Independance_, the following narrative was told to the company in the _salon_ of an aristocratic Polish lady by the Comte de R----. He had promised to tell a recent adventure with an inhabitant of the other world, and when the clock struck midnight he began, while his auditors gathered around him in breathless attention. His story we translate for the _International_:-- At the beginning of last December, one of his friends, the Marquis de N., came to see him. "You know, Count," said the Marquis, "what an invincible repugnance I feel against returning to my chateau in Normandy, where I had last summer the misfortune to lose my wife. But I left there in a writing desk some important papers, which now happen to be indispensable in a matter of family business. Here is the key; do me the kindness to go and get the papers, for so delicate a mission I can only intrust to you." M. de R. agreed to the request of his friend, and set out the following day. He stopped at a station on the Rouen railroad, whence a drive of two hours brought him to his friend's house. He stopped before it, and a gardener came out and spoke with him through the latticed iron gate, which he did not open. The Count was surprised at this distrust, which even a card of admission from the proprietor of the chateau did not overcome. Finally, after a brief absence, which seemed to have been employed in seeking the advice of some one within, the gardener came back and opened the gate. When the Count entered the court-yard he saw that the blinds on the hundred windows of the chateau were all closed, with one exception, where the blind had fallen off and lay upon the ground. As he afterwards discovered, this window was exactly in the middle of the chamber where his commission was to be executed. The Count's attention had been excited by his singular reception, and he carefully observed every thing. He noticed a small stove-pipe leading into a chimney. "Is the house inhabited?" he inquired. "No," replied the gardener, gruffly, as he opened a door upon a side stairway, which he mounted before the Count, opening at each story the little apertures for light in the queer old fashioned front of the chateau.