CAPTAIN BELGRAVE.

I.

"My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

In one of those villages peculiar to our Eastern coast, whose long lines of pepper-and-salt stonefences indicate laborious, if not profitable farming, and where the saline breath of the ocean has the effect of making fruit-trees more picturesque than productive, in a stone chunk of a house, whose aspect is quite as interesting to the geologist as to the architect, lives Captain Belgrave.

The Captain, as he says himself, "is American clean through, on the father's side, up to Plymouth Rock, and knows little, and cares less, of what is beyond that." To hear him talk, you would suppose Adam and Eve had landed there from the May-Flower, and that the Garden of Eden was located within rifle distance of that celebrated

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land-mark.

His genealogical table, however, stands upon unequal legs; for, on his mother's side he is part German and part Irishman. I mention this for the benefit of those who believe that certain qualities in men are hereditary. Of course it will be easy for them to assign those of Captain Belgrave to their proper source.

The house is square, and would not be remarkable but for a stone turret on one corner. This, rising from the ground some forty feet, embroidered with ivy, and pierced with arrow-slits, has rather a feudal look. It stands in a by-lane, apart from the congregated village. On the right side of the road is a plashy spring, somewhat redolent of mint in the summer. Opposite to this, in a clump of oaks, surrounded with a picket-fence, is the open porch, with broad wooden benches, and within is an ample hall, looking out upon well-cultivated fields, and beyond-blue water! This is the "Oakery," as Captain Belgrave calls it. Here he lives with his brother Adolphus-bachelors both.

His title is a mystery. There is a legend in the village, that during the last war Belgrave was enrolled in the militia on some frontier. One night

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he was pacing as sentinel on a long wooden piazza in front of the General's quarters. It was midnight; the camp was asleep, and the moon was just sinking behind a bank of clouds. Belgrave heard a footstep on the stairs at the foot of the piazza. "Who goes there?" No answer. Another step. "Who goes there?" he repeated, and his heart began to fail him. No answer-but another step. He cocked his musket. Step! step! step! and then between him and the sinking moon appeared an enormous head, decorated with diabolical horns. Belgrave drew a long breath and fired. The next instant the spectre was upon him; he was knocked down; the drums beat to arms; the guard turned out, and found the sentinel stretched upon the floor, with an old he-goat, full of defiance and odor, standing on him. From that time he was called "Captain.'

No place, though it be a paradise, is perfect without one of the gentler sex. There is a lady at the Oakery. Miss Augusta Belgrave is a maiden of about let me see; her age was formerly inscribed on the fly-leaf of the family Bible between the Old and New Testaments; but the page was torn out, and now it is somewhere in the Apocrypha. No matter what her age may be; if you were to see her, you would say she was safe

over the breakers. Two unmarried brothers, with a spinster sister, living alone: it is not infrequent in old families. The rest of the household may be embraced in Hannah, the help, who is also " "a maiden all forlorn," and Jim, the stable-boy. Jim is a unit, as well as the rest. Jim has been a stable-boy all his life, and now, at the age of sixty, is only a boy ripened. His chief pride and glory is to drive a pair of bob-tailed bay trotters that are (traditionally) fast! Adolphus, who has a turn for literature, christened the off-horse "Spectator;" but the near horse came from a bankrupt winebroker, who named him "Chateau Margaux." This the Captain reduced to "Shatto," and the village people corrupted to "Shatter."

There was something bold and jaunty in the way the Captain used to drive old Shatter on a dog-trot through the village (Spectator rarely went with his mate except to church on Sundays), with squared elbows, and whip depending at a just angle over the dash-board. "Talk of your fast horses!" he would say. "Why, if I would only let him out," pointing his whip, like a marshal's baton, toward Shatter, "you would see time!" But he never lets him out.

The square turret rises considerably above the

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house roof. Every night, at bed-time, the villagers see a light shining through its narrow loop-holes. There are loop-holes in the room below, and strong casements of ordinary size in the rooms adjoining. In the one next to the tower Miss Augusta sleeps, as all the village knows, for she is seen at times looking out of the window. Next to that is another room, in which Adolphus sleeps. He is often seen looking out of that window. Next, again, to that is the vestal chamber of Hannah, on the south-west corner of the house. She is sometimes seen looking out of the window on either side. Next to that again is the dormitory of Jim, the stable-boy. Jim always smells like a menagerie, and so does his room, no doubt. He never looks out of his window except upon the Fourth of July, when there is too much noise in the village to risk driving Spec and Shat. No living person but the occupants has ever been in that story of the house. No living person understands the mystery of the tower. The light appears at night through the loop-holes in the second story, then flashes upward, shines again through the slits in the lofty part of the turret, burns steadily half an hour or so, and then vanishes. Who occupies that lonely turret?