"Oh, papa! can such things really be? can a parting spirit appear to us the moment it leaves the body?" inquired Claudia, in an awe- struck manner.
"My dear if anyone had related to me such a strange circumstance as this, of which we are all partly cognizant, I should have discredited the whole affair. As it is, I know not what to make of it. It may have been a dream; nay, it must have been a dream; yet, even as a dream, occurring just at the hour it did, it was certainly an astonishing and a most marvelous coincidence."
Again Claudia dropped her head upon the supporting bosom of Lady Hurstmonceux, but this time it was in weariness and in thought that she reposed there.
A few minutes passed, and then, without lifting her head, she murmured:
"Tell me all about it, papa; I must learn some time; as well now as any other."
"Can you bear to hear the story now, Claudia?"
"Better now, I think, than at a future time; I am in a measure prepared for it now. How did it happen, papa?"
The judge drew closer to his daughter, took her hand in his, and said:
"I will tell you, as McRae told me, my dear. You must know that from the time Lord Vincent read the published confession of Frisbie, in the afternoon papers, he became so much changed in all respects as to excite the attention, then the suspicion, and finally the alarm of his keepers. At six o'clock after the turnkey, Donald, had paid his last visit to his prisoner, and locked up the cell for the night, he reported the condition of Lord Vincent to the governor of the jail. Mr. Gra'ame, on hearing the account given by Donald, determined to curtail many of the privileges his lordship had hitherto, as an untried prisoner, enjoyed. Among the rest he determined that nothing more should be carried to his lordship in his cell that he, the governor, had not first examined, as a precautionary measure against drugs or tools, with which the prisoner might do himself a mischief."
"I should think they ought to have taken that precaution from the first," said Claudia.