632 Apparilion'Advenlures. QDec. 



it is plain that Blosset experienced gi-eater agitation than he was willing 

 to confess — sleep refused to revisit his eyelids — he rose and dressed him- 

 self. It appeared as though his evil genius had compelled him to seek 

 the fulfilment of his destiny ; half an hour had scarcely elapsed since 

 the scene I have described^ when he was observed traversing the Grand 

 Plaza ; his clothes were in disorder, and he had the air of one inebriated. 

 Power and his visitors were on the point of separating for the night, 

 when the door opened, and Blosset made his unexpected entrance. With 

 regard to what then ensued I have to plead ignorance ; the result was 

 a hostile meeting between Power and Blosset on the following morning, 

 in which the latter was wounded. The second day the wound evinced 

 dangerous symptoms, which increased during the night, and ere the 

 dawn of the third morning, gangrene having become manifest, the sur- 

 geons (three of whom were in attendance) pronounced it mortal. The 

 patient continued at intervals restless and uneasy, with occasional fits 

 of lethargy, until an hour previous to his death, when he raised himself 

 in his bed, and inquired for Trayner ; a messenger was dispatched to 

 seek him, but as he did not make his appearance for some time, Blosset 

 betrayed considerable anxiety. At length he arrived, and in compli- 

 ance with the sign made him, approached the bed-side of his dying 

 patron, who conversed a few minutes with him, in so low a tone as to 

 be wholly inaudible to any but himself. The subject-matter of the con- 

 ference remained therefore a secret, though Trayner's countenance, 

 which more than once assumed a pallid hue, denoted it to have been of no 

 pleasing nature. The tide of life was now at the last ebb, the unhappy 

 man appeared struggling with some inward feeling to which he essayed 

 to give utterance ; his eyes, gleaming faintly, were directed towards 

 Trayner, of whom he at length, by an extraordinary effort of nature, 

 gathered strength to inquire " in what position the three last criminals 

 had submitted to their sentence?"* On receiving the reply to this 

 question, his glances became stedfastly fixed on a corner of the apart- 

 ment ; he continued for some moments in a state of mute observance, 

 and then feebly exclaimed, " Great God ! I behold them now !" In 

 another minute he was dead. 



The death of Blosset, or that of any other officer (an event, however, 

 to be regretted in itself), would have occasioned no extraordinary sensa- 

 tion of wonder, had it not been preceded, and attended by circumstances 

 of a nature peculiarly singular. The mysterious occurrences which 

 took place nearly at the same moment at two different quarters of the 

 town, yet so apparently connected in their fatal results, as likewise the 

 strange coincidence, that Blosset's wound and demise should have exactly 

 tallied with the hour of Risdale's execution, gave rise throughout the 

 garrison to much speculative reasoning. For my part I have con- 

 tented myself with relating facts, leaving the reader to form his own 

 conclusion. G. B. H. 



• The two private soliliers had their faces towards the wall ; Hisdale, with his eyes 

 unbandaged, knelt fronting the death-dealing platoon. 



