"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."

"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
at it, too, with startled interest.

"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
since."

"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
it has been cold for all that time."

He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart
of fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had
bowed its head, and all was still.

"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
feeling."

He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused,--his right clasped
his daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed
at him with a look of unutterable tenderness.

"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.

"A young man, an author, a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when
we were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years,--he led an