The Banshee

O'Donnell. He well remembered, he said, many years ago, when he was a boy, his father, who was an officer in the Carlist Army, telling him of an adventure that happened to him during the first

turned the fortunes of the day. In the heat of the affray, however, Ralph O'Donnell and Dick O'Flanagan, carried away by their

rts to unloosen the thongs of tough cowhide with which their hands and feet were so cruelly bound together, and, after many frantic endeavours, they at last succeeded. O'Flanagan was the first to get free, and as soon as his numbed limbs allowed him to do so, he crawled to the side of his friend and liberated him, too. They then examined the room as best they could in the dark, and decided their only hope of escape lay in the chim

een anywhere, and so, feeling their way cautiously in and out a thick growth of trees and bushes, they soon got altogether clear of the premises, and found themselves once again free, but in a part of the country with which they were totally unacquainted. Two hours tramping along a tortuous, hilly high road, or to give it a more appropriate name, track, for

of speech. Such a vision of loveliness neither of them had seen for many a long day, and both were more than ordinarily susceptible where the fair sex was concerned. Dark, like most of the girls are in Spain, she was not swarthy, but had, on the other hand, a most singularly fair complexion, devoid of that tendency to hairiness which is apparent in so many of the women of that country. Her features were, perhaps, a trifl

te and well-kept, the fingers tapering and the nails long and almond shaped. She wore several rings and bracelets, and seemed altogether differe

, as I have said, very susceptible, was not so far led away

hted on O'Flanagan's solitary ring, which contained a ruby and was a kind of family mascot, akin to the famous cathach of Count Daniel O'Donnell of Tirconnell; and she muttered something which Ralph fancied had reference to the word "Carlists," and then, as if conscious he was watching her, she raised he

down somewhere with a roof over our

ng both follow her upstairs, with as little noise as possible, she conducted them to a large room with a very low cei

he prison," Ralph exclaimed, taking a surv

here are your own thoughts. I want to stay here always,

n a few minutes both young men were st

in a long, loose, flowing gown of some dark material, with a very pale face, beautifully chiselled, though by no means strictly classical features, and masses of shining golden hair that fell in rippling confusion on to her neck and shoulders. The idea that she was the Banshee instantly occurred to him. From his father's description of her, for his father had often spoken to him about her, she a

te from the lowest Inferno, and it leered at him with such appalling malignancy that, brave man as he had proved himself on the field of battle, he now completely lost his nerve, and would have called out, had not both figures suddenly vanished, their disappearance being immediately followed by the most agonising, heart-rending screams, intermingled with loud laughter and diabolical chuckling, which, for the

hen he gradually fell into a doze, from which he was eventually aroused by loud thumps o

night to O'Flanagan, who, somewhat to his astonish

mother the night before my father died. I don't know what the other apparition could have been, unless it was what my father used to term the 'hat

ul woman I mean-was the O'Donnell Banshee. I would have you know that the Limerick O'Donnells, with whom I am connecte

l as a Banshee. But, anyhow, if they were Banshees that you saw last night, they're a bit out in their calculations. They should have com

to do with you," Ralph replied.

eakfast things, at once began talking to her; and as it was only too evident that he wanted the field to himself, for

ot interfere with us because we were once good to one of their sick folk-and the Spaniard, brigand though he ma

nearest town?"

alph so much before, and which he found impossible to analyse. "It is about eight miles from here. D

me with me, Dick, or will you wait here till I return. I

happy here, and want a rest badly. Don't, whatever you do, let on to anyone connecte

n a battle, yes?" the g

owever, I don't in the least bemoan the perils and hardships we have undergone, for, had events turned out otherwise, we should never have had the jo

for a lucky incident, he might have found himself landed in a quandary. As he was entering the outskirts of the town he met an o

he Governor is the sworn enemy of all Carlists, and has given strict orders th

s told it was just the other way about, and

e hoped that wretched weakling of a woman would soon be put off the throne and we should have someone who was fit to govern-meaning D

uit, and, on being informed that there was a Jew's shop within a few minutes' walk, he thanke

n the hotel for the night and see if he could get hold of some really definite news that might be of value to his own headquarters. Learning that someone would be leaving the hotel shortly and passing by the inn where O'Flanagan was staying, he gave them a note to give to his friend, stating that he could not be back till the following day, perhaps about noon. He then took up his seat before the parlour fire, apparently absorbed in read

fully disordered mass of matted, tow-coloured hair. It was too hellish-too inconceivably foul and baneful to dare think about, and seized with a fit of shuddering, he thrust his head under the bedclothes, lest he should see it again appearing before him. What, he wondered, did they portend? Not some horrible happening to Dick. He had always understood that the one who neither sees nor hears the Banshee during its manifestations is the one that is doomed to die. And yet Dick was assuredly as safe in that inn as he was here-here, surrounded on all sides by his enemies. Once or twice he fancied he h

t the place when he arrived. All the sunbeams seemed to have congregated in just that one spot, and to have converted the walls and window-panes of the little old-fashioned building into

ed "The Travellers' Paradise," for all seemed so calm and serene-so truly heavenly. He rapped at the door, and, after some moments, rapped again. He then heard footsteps, whic

ter than she had been when Ralph last saw her. She wore a very bewitching kind of gipsy frock of red velvet-the skirt very short and the bo

very upset at your not turning up last nigh

?" Ralph exclaimed, "and d

him, but he said he would try and call in here ag

't say where

N

m? Ralph knew O'Flanagan was at times apt to be over-impulsive and hasty in his love-makings. Had he got on a bit too rapidly? Spanish girls are very easily upset, and perhaps this one had a lover in the background. Perhaps she was married. That seemed to him the most feasible explanation for Dick's absence.

ea that she had many things to attend to, he went a little way up the hillside at the back of the premises, and enjoyed a quiet siesta under

rather more workaday attire, but with her hair still very coquettishly decorated with ribbons, sharpening a long glist

e you up to? Not sharpening that

wing her beautiful teeth in a smile, almost amountin

ounded arms and the long, slim, tapering fingers. "You kill a pig! Do yo

obs they can't do because their eyesight is not very good, and their hands lack the skill. The gentleman looks shocked, but is there anything so very dreadful in

eds of violence and bloodshed. But with beautiful, dainty girls like you it is differ

ow please go in and sit in the parlour, or my aunt will

he young girl came into the room to clear the table, Ralph noticed that she was once again wearing the gay apparel she had worn earlier in the day; and all in red, even to the ribbons in her hair, she seemed to be dressed

ed into the depths of her large, beautifully shaped purplish grey eyes, the more and more hopelessly enslaved did he become, t

not observe what he was drinking or how many times she filled up his glass. If she had given him a poisoned goblet

isses, "now, Se?or, it is time for you to go to bed. We do not keep late hours here, and to-morrow, Se?o

at is a tremendous way off, and isn't it to-

er of the two. Well, well, you are both soldiers, and soldiers were ever gay dogs; but you must be careful, Se?or, you and your friend do not quarrel, f

re to look at you? Damn--" but before he could utter another syllable, the gi

imself to be got upstairs to his room by pushes and coaxings, and, as he made a last frant

smartly on the edge of a chair. For a moment or so he was partially stunned, but, the flow of blood from his nose relieving him, he gradually came to his senses, all trace of his drunkenness having completely vanished. The first thing he did then was to look at the carpet which, by a stroke of

of the bed, just about in a line with the pillow. He applied his fin

nation of the room, and, lifting the lid of a huge oak chest that stood in one corner, he

shock. The face that looked up at him with such utter lack of expression in its

ut, not cleanly as a man would have done it, but with repeated hack

rst saw her; explained, too, the stealthy, tiptoeing footsteps in the passage that night, the reason for the appea

ng, the answer seemed clear. It was, of course, robbery. Snake-like, she used those beautiful eyes of hers to fascinate her victims-to lull them

this girl to have done it-this girl so young and enchanting, why it was almost inconceivable, and he would not have believed it, had not the grim proofs of it lain so close at hand. What was he to do? Of course, now that he w

arred; he tried the door, it was locked on the outside; he looked up the chim

l tiptoed into the room to kill, and then-he couldn't bear the idea of fighti

t the candle, and, lying on the

is door. Then they paused, and he instinctively knew she was listening. He breathed heavily, just as a man would do who had drunk

a bolt for the passage. There was a wild shriek, something whizzed past his head and fell with a loud clatter on the floor, and all the doors in the house downstairs seemed to open simultaneously. Reaching the head of the stairs in a few bounds, he was down them in a trice. A hideous old hag rushed at him wi

ood in the hoarser shouts of men, Ralph took to his heels, nor

here and get him arrested as a Carlist; instead, he struck off the high road along a side

when the war was at last over and he had succeeded in persuading the local authorities to take the matter in hand, the