the captain, 'I should charge you with drinking. As it is, I'll
hold you accountable for nothing worse than dreaming. Don't do it
again, Mr. Bruce.' Bruce sticks to his story; Bruce swears he saw
the man writing on the captain's slate. The captain takes up the
slate and looks at it. 'Lord save us and bless us!' says he;
'here the writing is, sure enough !' Bruce looks at it too, and
sees the writing as plainly as can be, in these words: 'Steer to
the nor'-west.' That, and no more.--Ah, goodness me, narrating is
dry work, Mr. Germaine. With your leave, I'll take another drop
of the sherry wine.

"Well (it's fine old wine, that; look at the oily drops running
down the glass)--well, steering to the north-west, you will
understand, was out of the captain's course. Nevertheless,
finding no solution of the mystery on board the ship, and the
weather at the time being fine, the captain determined, while the
daylight lasted, to alter his course, and see what came of it.
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg came of it; with
a wrecked ship stove in, and frozen fast to the ice; and the
passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion.
Wonderful enough, you will say; but more remains behind. As the
mate was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the
bark, who should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly
appearance Bruce had seen in the captain's cabin writing on the
captain's slate! And more than that--if your capacity for being
surprised isn't clean worn out by this time--the passenger
recognized the bark as the very vessel which he had seen in a
dream at noon that day. He had even spoken of it to one of the
officers on board the wrecked ship when he woke. 'We shall be
rescued to-day,' he had said; and he had exactly described the
rig of the bark hours and hours before the vessel herself hove in
view. Now you know, Mr. Germaine, how my wife's far-away cousin
kept an appointment with a ghost, and what came of it."*

Concluding his story in these words, the doctor helped himself to
another glass of the "sherry wine." I was not satisfied yet; I
wanted to know more.

"The writing on the slate," I said. "Did it remain there, or did
it vanish like the writing in my book?"

Mr. MacGlue's answer disappointed me. He had never asked, and had
never heard, whether the writing had remained or not. He had told
me all that he knew, and he had but one thing more to say, and
that was in the nature of a remark with a moral attached to it.
"There's a marvelous resemblance, Mr. Germaine, between your
story and Bruce's story. The main difference, as I see it, is
this. The passenger's appointment proved to be the salvation of a
whole ship's company. I very much doubt whether the lady's
appointment will prove to be the salvation of You."

I silently reconsidered the strange narrative which had just been
related to me. Another man had seen what I had seen--had done
what I proposed to do! My mother noticed with grave displeasure
the strong impression which Mr. MacGlue had produced on my mind.

"I wish you had kept your story to yourself, doctor," she said,
sharply.

"May I ask why, madam?"

"You have confirmed my son, sir, in his resolution to go to Saint
Anthony's Well."

Mr. MacGlue quietly consulted his pocket almanac before he
replied.

"It's the full moon on the ninth of the month," he said. "That
gives Mr. Germaine some days of rest, ma'am,. before he takes the
journey. If he travels in his own comfortable carriage--whatever
I may think, morally speaking, of his enterprise--I can't say,
medically speaking, that I believe it will do him much harm."

"You know where Saint Anthony's Well is?" I interposed.

"I must be mighty ignorant of Edinburgh not to know that,"
replied the doctor.

"Is the Well in Edinburgh, then?"

"It's just outside Edinburgh--looks down on it, as you may say.
You follow the old street called the Canongate to the end. You
turn to your right past the famous Palace of Holyrood; you cross
the Park and the Drive, and take your way upward to the ruins of
Anthony's Chapel, on the shoulder of the hill--and there you are!
There's a high rock behind the chapel, and at the foot of it you
will find the spring they call Anthony's Well. It's thought a
pretty view by moonlight; and they tell me it's no longer beset
at night by bad characters, as it used to be in the old time."

My mother, in graver and graver displeasure, rose to retire to
the drawing-room.

"I confess you have disappointed me," she said to Mr. MacGlue. "I
should have thought you would have been the last man to encourage
my son in an act of imprudence."

"Craving your pardon, madam, your son requires no encouragement.
I can see for myself that his mind is made up. Where is the use
of a person like me trying to stop him? Dear madam, if he won't


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