of midnight, he actually heard some inconceivable noise in the apartment, as if some person had risen up from among straw, which rustled beneath them, walked slowly over the floor, and sank, sighing and groaning, behind the chimney.  When he came down the next morning, the marchesa asked him how the investigation had gone on; and he, after gazing about him with wondering glances, and bolting the door, told her the story of the chamber’s being haunted was true.  She was terrified out of her senses; but begged him, before making any public disclosure, once more to make the experiment coolly in her company.  Accompanied by a trusty servant, they accordingly repeated their visit next night, and again heard, as the marquess had done before, the same ghostly and inconceivable noise; and nothing but the anxious wish to get rid of the castle, cost what it would, enabled them to suppress their terrors in presence of the servant, and to ascribe the sound to some accidental cause.  On the evening of the third day, when both, determined to probe the matter to the bottom, were ascending with beating hearts the stair leading to the stranger’s apartment, it chanced that the house dog, who had been let loose from the chain, was lying directly before the door of the room; and, willing perhaps to have the company of any other living thing in the mysterious apartment, they took the dog into the room along with them.  The husband and wife seated themselves on the couch—­the marquess with his sword and pistols beside him; and while they endeavoured, the best way they could, to amuse themselves with conversation, the dog, cowering down on the floor at their feet, fell asleep.  Again, with the stroke of midnight, the noise was renewed;—­something, though what they could not discover, raised itself us if with crutches in the corner; the straw rustled as before.  At the sound of the first foot-fall, the dog awoke, roused itself, pricked up its ears, and growling and barking as if some person were advancing towards him, retreated in the direction of the chimney.  At this sight, the marchioness rushed out of the room, her hair standing on end; and while the marquess seized his sword, exclaimed “Who is there?” and receiving no answer, thrust like a madman in all directions, she hastily packed up a few articles of dress, and made the best of her way towards the town.  Scarcely, however, had she proceeded a few steps, when she discovered that the castle was on fire.  The marquess had, in his distraction, overturned the tapers, and the room was instantly in flames.  Every effort was made to save the unhappy nobleman, but in vain:  he perished in the utmost tortures, and his bones, as the traveller may be aware, still lie where they were collected by the neighbouring peasants—­in the corner of the apartment from which he had expelled the beggar woman of Locarno.—­Edinburgh Literary Journal and Gazette.

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SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.