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The Shape of Fear

by Elia W. Peattie

September, 1999  [Etext #1876]


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This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE





Note: I have omitted signature indicators and italicization of the
running heads.  In addition, I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE  LINE  ORIGINAL      CHANGED TO
 156     1  where as      were as
 156     4  mouth         mouth.
 165     5  Wedgwood      Wedgewood
 166     9  Wedgwood      Wedgewood
 167     6  surperfluous  superfluous
 172    11  every         ever
 173    17  Bogg          Boggs





THE SHAPE OF FEAR


And Other Ghostly Tales



BY

ELIA WILKINSON PEATTIE




CONTENTS


THE SHAPE OF FEAR

ON THE NORTHERN ICE

THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST

A SPECTRAL COLLIE

THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT

STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE

A CHILD OF THE RAIN

THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT

STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT

THE PIANO NEXT DOOR

AN ASTRAL ONION

FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD

A GRAMMATICAL GHOST




THE SHAPE OF FEAR

TIM O'CONNOR -- who was de-
scended from the O'Conors with
one N -- started life as a poet
and an enthusiast.  His mother
had designed him for the priesthood, and at
the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an
ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other,
he got into the newspaper business instead,
and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a
literary style of great beauty and an income
of modest proportions.  He fell in with men
who talked of art for art's sake, -- though
what right they had to speak of art at all
nobody knew, -- and little by little his view
of life and love became more or less pro-
fane. He met a woman who sucked his
heart's blood, and he knew it and made no
protest; nay, to the great amusement of the
fellows who talked of art for art's sake, he
went the length of marrying her. He could
not in decency explain that he had the tra-
ditions of fine gentlemen behind him and
so had to do as he did, because his friends
might not have understood. He laughed at
the days when he had thought of the priest-
hood, blushed when he ran across any of
those tender and exquisite old verses he had
written in his youth, and became addicted
to absinthe and other less peculiar drinks,
and to gaming a little to escape a madness
of ennui.

As the years went by he avoided, with
more and more scorn, that part of the world
which he denominated Philistine, and con-
sorted only with the fellows who flocked about
Jim O'Malley's saloon. He was pleased with
solitude, or with these convivial wits, and with
not very much else beside.  Jim O'Malley
was a sort of Irish poem, set to inspiring
measure.   He was, in fact, a Hibernian
M&aelig;cenas, who knew better than to put bad
whiskey before a man of talent, or tell a trite
tale in the presence of a wit. The recountal
of his disquisitions on politics and other cur-
rent matters had enabled no less than three
men to acquire national reputations; and a
number of wretches, having gone the way of
men who talk of art for art's sake, and dying
in foreign lands, or hospitals, or asylums,
having no one else to be homesick for, had
been homesick for Jim O'Malley, and wept
for the sound of his voice and the grasp of
his hearty hand.

When Tim O'Connor turned his back upon
most of the things he was born to and took
up with the life which he consistently lived
till the unspeakable end, he was unable to
get rid of certain peculiarities. For example,
in spite of all his debauchery, he continued
to look like the Beloved Apostle. Notwith-
standing abject friendships he wrote limpid
and noble English. Purity seemed to dog his
heels, no matter how violently he attempted
to escape from her. He was never so drunk
that he was not an exquisite, and even his
creditors, who had become inured to his
deceptions, confessed it was a privilege to
meet so perfect a gentleman. The creature
who held him in bondage, body and soul,
actually came to love him for his gentleness,
and for some quality which baffled her, and
made her ache with a strange longing which
she could not define. Not that she ever de-
fined anything, poor little beast!  She had
skin the color of pale gold, and yellow eyes
with brown lights in them, and great plaits
of straw-colored hair. About her lips was a
fatal and sensuous smile, which, when it got
hold of a man's imagination, would not let
it go, but held to it, and mocked it till the
day of his death.   She was the incarnation
of the Eternal Feminine, with all the wifeli-
ness and the maternity left out -- she was
ancient, yet ever young, and familiar as joy
or tears or sin.

She took good care of Tim in some ways:
fed him well, nursed him back to reason after
a period of hard drinking, saw that he put
on overshoes when the walks were wet, and
looked after his money.   She even prized
his brain, for she discovered that it was a
delicate little machine which produced gold.
By association with him and his friends, she
learned that a number of apparently useless
things had value in the eyes of certain con-
venient fools, and so she treasured the auto-
graphs of distinguished persons who wrote to
him -- autographs which he disdainfully tossed
in the waste basket.   She was careful with
presentation copies from authors, and she
went the length of urging Tim to write a
book himself. But at that he balked.

"Write a book!" he cried to her, his gen-
tle face suddenly white with passion. "Who
am I to commit such a profanation?"

She didn't know what he meant, but she
had a theory that it was dangerous to excite
him, and so she sat up till midnight to cook
a chop for him when he came home that night.

He preferred to have her sitting up for him,
and he wanted every electric light in their
apartments turned to the full.   If, by any
chance, they returned together to a dark
house, he would not enter till she touched the
button in the hall, and illuminated the room.
Or if it so happened that the lights were
turned off in the night time, and he awoke to
find himself in darkness, he shrieked till the
woman came running to his relief, and, with
derisive laughter, turned them on again. But
when she found that after these frights he lay
trembling and white in his bed, she began to
be alarmed for the clever, gold-making little
machine, and to renew her assiduities, and to
horde more tenaciously than ever, those valu-
able curios on which she some day expected to
realize when he was out of the way, and no
longer in a position to object to their barter.

O'Connor's idiosyncrasy of fear was a
source of much amusement among the boys
at the office where he worked. They made
open sport of it, and yet, recognizing him
for a sensitive plant, and granting that genius
was entitled to whimsicalities, it was their
custom when they called for him after work
hours, to permit him to reach the lighted cor-
ridor before they turned out the gas over his
desk. This, they reasoned, was but a slight
service to perform for the most enchanting
beggar in the world.

"Dear fellow," said Rick Dodson, who
loved him, "is it the Devil you expect to see?
And if so, why are you averse? Surely the
Devil is not such a bad old chap."

"You haven't found him so?"

"Tim, by heaven, you know, you ought to
explain to me.  A citizen of the world and
a student of its purlieus, like myself, ought to
know what there is to know! Now you're a
man of sense, in spite of a few bad habits --
such as myself, for example. Is this fad of
yours madness? -- which would be quite to
your credit, -- for gadzooks, I like a lunatic!
Or is it the complaint of a man who has gath-
ered too much data on the subject of Old
Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more
occult, and therefore more interesting?"

"Rick, boy," said Tim, "you're too -- in-
quiring!" And he turned to his desk with a
look of delicate hauteur.

It was the very next night that these two
tippling pessimists spent together talking about
certain disgruntled but immortal gentlemen,
who, having said their say and made the world
quite uncomfortable, had now journeyed on
to inquire into the nothingness which they
postulated.  The dawn was breaking in the
muggy east; the bottles were empty, the cigars
burnt out. Tim turned toward his friend with
a sharp breaking of sociable silence.

"Rick," he said, "do you know that Fear
has a Shape?"

"And so has my nose!"

"You asked me the other night what I
feared. Holy father, I make my confession
to you. What I fear is Fear."

"That's because you've drunk too much --
or not enough.

  "'Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring
    Your winter garment of repentance fling --'"

"My costume then would be too nebulous
for this weather, dear boy. But it's true what
I was saying. I am afraid of ghosts."

"For an agnostic that seems a bit --"

"Agnostic! Yes, so completely an agnostic
that I do not even know that I do not know!
God, man, do you mean you have no ghosts
-- no -- no things which shape themselves?
Why, there are things I have done --"

"Don't think of them, my boy!  See,
'night's candles are burnt out, and jocund
day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain
top.'"

Tim looked about him with a sickly smile.
He looked behind him and there was nothing
there; stared at the blank window, where the
smoky dawn showed its offensive face, and
there was nothing there.  He pushed away
the moist hair from his haggard face -- that
face which would look like the blessed St.
John, and leaned heavily back in his chair.

"'Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I,'"
he murmured drowsily, "'it is some meteor
which the sun exhales, to be to thee this
night --'"

The words floated off in languid nothing-
ness, and he slept. Dodson arose preparatory
to stretching himself on his couch. But first
he bent over his friend with a sense of tragic
appreciation.

"Damned by the skin of his teeth!" he mut-
tered.  "A little more, and he would have
gone right, and the Devil would have lost a
good fellow. As it is" -- he smiled with his
usual conceited delight in his own sayings,
even when they were uttered in soliloquy -- "he
is merely one of those splendid gentlemen one
will meet with in hell." Then Dodson had a
momentary nostalgia for goodness himself,
but he soon overcame it, and stretching him-
self on his sofa, he, too, slept.

That night he and O'Connor went together
to hear "Faust" sung, and returning to the
office, Dodson prepared to write his criti-
cism. Except for the distant clatter of tele-
graph instruments, or the peremptory cries of
"copy" from an upper room, the office was
still. Dodson wrote and smoked his inter-
minable cigarettes; O' Connor rested his head
in his hands on the desk, and sat in perfect
silence. He did not know when Dodson fin-
ished, or when, arising, and absent-mindedly
extinguishing the lights, he moved to the
door with his copy in his hands.  Dodson
gathered up the hats and coats as he passed
them where they lay on a chair, and called:

"It is done, Tim. Come, let's get out of
this."

There was no answer, and he thought Tim
was following, but after he had handed his
criticism to the city editor, he saw he was
still alone, and returned to the room for his
friend. He advanced no further than the
doorway, for, as he stood in the dusky cor-
ridor and looked within the darkened room,
he saw before his friend a Shape, white, of
perfect loveliness, divinely delicate and pure
and ethereal, which seemed as the embodi-
ment of all goodness. From it came a soft
radiance and a perfume softer than the wind
when "it breathes upon a bank of violets
stealing and giving odor." Staring at it,
with eyes immovable, sat his friend.

It was strange that at sight of a thing so
unspeakably fair, a coldness like that which
comes from the jewel-blue lips of a Muir
crevasse should have fallen upon Dodson, or
that it was only by summoning all the man-
hood that was left in him, that he was able
to restore light to the room, and to rush to
his friend.  When he reached poor Tim he
was stone-still with paralysis.   They took
him home to the woman, who nursed him out
of that attack -- and later on worried him into
another.

When he was able to sit up and jeer at
things a little again, and help himself to the
quail the woman broiled for him, Dodson,
sitting beside him, said:

"Did you call that little exhibition of yours
legerdemain, Tim, you sweep? Or are you
really the Devil's bairn?"

"It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quite
seriously.

"But it seemed mild as mother's milk."

"It was compounded of the good I might
have done. It is that which I fear."

He would explain no more. Later -- many
months later -- he died patiently and sweetly
in the madhouse, praying for rest. The little
beast with the yellow eyes had high mass cele-
brated for him, which, all things considered,
was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.

Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it.

"Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't so
dark in the tomb! What do you suppose Tim
is looking at?"

As for Jim O'Malley, he was with diffi-
culty kept from illuminating the grave with
electricity.




ON THE NORTHERN ICE


THE winter nights up at Sault Ste.
Marie are as white and luminous as
the Milky Way. The silence which
rests upon the solitude appears to
be white also. Even sound has been included
in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the
still white frost, all things seem to be oblit-
erated. The stars have a poignant brightness,
but they belong to heaven and not to earth,
and between their immeasurable height and
the still ice rolls the ebon ether in vast, liquid
billows.

In such a place it is difficult to believe that
the world is actually peopled. It seems as if
it might be the dark of the day after Cain
killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's re-
mainder was huddled in affright away from
the awful spaciousness of Creation.

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for
Echo Bay -- bent on a pleasant duty -- he
laughed to himself, and said that he did not
at all object to being the only man in the
world, so long as the world remained as un-
speakably beautiful as it was when he buckled
on his skates and shot away into the solitude.
He was bent on reaching his best friend in
time to act as groomsman, and business had
delayed him till time was at its briefest. So
he journeyed by night and journeyed alone,
and when the tang of the frost got at his
blood, he felt as a spirited horse feels when it
gets free of bit and bridle. The ice was as
glass, his skates were keen, his frame fit, and
his venture to his taste! So he laughed, and
cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the
water.   He could hear the whistling of the
air as he cleft it.

As he went on and on in the black stillness,
he began to have fancies. He imagined him-
self enormously tall -- a great Viking of the
Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love.
And that reminded him that he had a love
-- though, indeed, that thought was always
present with him as a background for other
thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her
that she was his love, for he had seen her only
a few times, and the auspicious occasion had
not yet presented itself. She lived at Echo
Bay also, and was to be the maid of honor to
his friend's bride -- which was one more
reason why he skated almost as swiftly as the
wind, and why, now and then, he let out a
shout of exultation.

The one cloud that crossed Hagadorn's sun
of expectancy was the knowledge that Marie
Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie
lived in a house with two stories to it, and
wore otter skin about her throat and little
satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she
went sledding.  Moreover, in the locket in
which she treasured a bit of her dead mother's
hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea.
These things made it difficult -- perhaps im-
possible -- for Ralph Hagadorn to say more
than, "I love you." But that much he meant
to say though he were scourged with chagrin
for his temerity.

This determination grew upon him as he
swept along the ice under the starlight.
Venus made a glowing path toward the west
and seemed eager to reassure him. He was
sorry he could not skim down that avenue of
light which flowed from the love-star, but he
was forced to turn his back upon it and face
the black northeast.

It came to him with a shock that he was
not alone.   His eyelashes were frosted and
his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first
he thought it might be an illusion. But when
he had rubbed his eyes hard, he made sure
that not very far in front of him was a long
white skater in fluttering garments who sped
over the ice as fast as ever werewolf went.

He called aloud, but there was no answer.
He shaped his hands and trumpeted through
them, but the silence was as before -- it was
complete. So then he gave chase, setting his
teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm
young muscles.  But go however he would,
the white skater went faster. After a time,
as he glanced at the cold gleam of the north
star, he perceived that he was being led from
his direct path. For a moment he hesitated,
wondering if he would not better keep to his
road, but his weird companion seemed to
draw him on irresistibly, and finding it sweet
to follow, he followed.

Of course it came to him more than once
in that strange pursuit, that the white skater
was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes
men see curious things when the hoar frost is
on the earth. Hagadorn's own father -- to
hark no further than that for an instance!
-- who lived up there with the Lake Superior
Indians, and worked in the copper mines, had
welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter
night, who was gone by morning, leaving wolf
tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John
Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you
about it any day -- if he were alive. (Alack,
the snow where the wolf tracks were, is melted
now!)

Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater
all the night, and when the ice flushed pink
at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into
the cold heavens, she was gone, and Haga-
dorn was at his destination. The sun climbed
arrogantly up to his place above all other
things, and as Hagadorn took off his skates
and glanced carelessly lakeward, he beheld a
great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves
showing blue and hungry between white fields.
Had he rushed along his intended path,
watching the stars to guide him, his glance
turned upward, all his body at magnificent
momentum, he must certainly have gone into
that cold grave.

How wonderful that it had been sweet to
follow the white skater, and that he followed!

His heart beat hard as he hurried to his
friend's house. But he encountered no wed-
ding furore.   His friend met him as men
meet in houses of mourning.

"Is this your wedding face?" cried Haga-
dorn. "Why, man, starved as I am, I look
more like a bridegroom than you!"

"There's no wedding to-day!"

"No wedding! Why, you're not --"

"Marie Beaujeu died last night --"

"Marie --"

"Died last night.   She had been skating
in the afternoon, and she came home chilled
and wandering in her mind, as if the frost
had got in it somehow. She grew worse and
worse, and all the time she talked of you."

"Of me?"

"We wondered what it meant. No one
knew you were lovers."

"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity.
At least, I didn't know --"

"She said you were on the ice, and that
you didn't know about the big breaking-up,
and she cried to us that the wind was off shore
and the rift widening. She cried over and
over again that you could come in by the old
French creek if you only knew --"

"I came in that way."

"But how did you come to do that? It's
out of the path. We thought perhaps --"

But Hagadorn broke in with his story and
told him all as it had come to pass.

That day they watched beside the maiden,
who lay with tapers at her head and at her
feet, and in the little church the bride who
might have been at her wedding said prayers
for her friend. They buried Marie Beaujeu
in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was
before the altar with her, as he had intended
from the first! Then at midnight the lovers
who were to wed whispered their vows in the
gloom of the cold church, and walked together
through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths
upon a grave.

Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back
again to his home. They wanted him to go
by sunlight, but he had his way, and went
when Venus made her bright path on the ice.

The truth was, he had hoped for the com-
panionship of the white skater. But he did
not have it. His only companion was the
wind. The only voice he heard was the bay-
ing of a wolf on the north shore.  The world
was as empty and as white as if God had just
created it, and the sun had not yet colored
nor man defiled it.




THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST


THE first time one looked at Els-
beth, one was not prepossessed.
She was thin and brown, her nose
turned slightly upward, her toes
went in just a perceptible degree, and her
hair was perfectly straight.   But when one
looked longer, one perceived that she was a
charming little creature. The straight hair
was as fine as silk, and hung in funny little
braids down her back; there was not a flaw
in her soft brown skin, and her mouth was
tender and shapely. But her particular charm
lay in a look which she habitually had, of
seeming to know curious things -- such as it
is not allotted to ordinary persons to know.
One felt tempted to say to her:

"What are these beautiful things which
you know, and of which others are ignorant?
What is it you see with those wise and pel-
lucid eyes? Why is it that everybody loves
you?"

Elsbeth was my little godchild, and I knew
her better than I knew any other child in the
world. But still I could not truthfully say
that I was familiar with her, for to me her
spirit was like a fair and fragrant road in the
midst of which I might walk in peace and
joy, but where I was continually to discover
something new.  The last time I saw her
quite well and strong was over in the woods
where she had gone with her two little
brothers and her nurse to pass the hottest
weeks of summer. I followed her, foolish old
creature that I was, just to be near her, for I
needed to dwell where the sweet aroma of her
life could reach me.

One morning when I came from my room,
limping a little, because I am not so young as
I used to be, and the lake wind works havoc
with me, my little godchild came dancing to
me singing:

"Come with me and I'll show you my
places, my places, my places!"

Miriam, when she chanted by the Red Sea
might have been more exultant, but she could
not have been more bewitching. Of course
I knew what "places" were, because I had
once been a little girl myself, but unless you
are acquainted with the real meaning of
"places," it would be useless to try to ex-
plain. Either you know "places" or you do
not -- just as you understand the meaning of
poetry or you do not. There are things in
the world which cannot be taught.

Elsbeth's two tiny brothers were present,
and I took one by each hand and followed
her. No sooner had we got out of doors in
the woods than a sort of mystery fell upon
the world and upon us. We were cautioned
to move silently, and we did so, avoiding the
crunching of dry twigs.

"The fairies hate noise," whispered my
little godchild, her eyes narrowing like a
cat's.

"I must get my wand first thing I do," she
said in an awed undertone. "It is useless to
try to do anything without a wand."

The tiny boys were profoundly impressed,
and, indeed, so was I. I felt that at last, I
should, if I behaved properly, see the fairies,
which had hitherto avoided my materialistic
gaze. It was an enchanting moment, for
there appeared, just then, to be nothing
commonplace about life.

There was a swale near by, and into
this the little girl plunged. I could see her
red straw hat bobbing about among the
tall rushes, and I wondered if there were
snakes.

"Do you think there are snakes?" I asked
one of the tiny boys.

"If there are," he said with conviction,
"they won't dare hurt her."

He convinced me.   I feared no more.
Presently Elsbeth came out of the swale. In
her hand was a brown "cattail," perfectly
full and round.   She carried it as queens
carry their sceptres -- the beautiful queens we
dream of in our youth.

"Come," she commanded, and waved the
sceptre in a fine manner.  So we followed,
each tiny boy gripping my hand tight.  We
were all three a trifle awed. Elsbeth led us
into a dark underbrush.  The branches, as
they flew back in our faces, left them wet
with dew. A wee path, made by the girl's
dear feet, guided our footsteps.   Perfumes
of elderberry and wild cucumber scented the
air. A bird, frightened from its nest, made
frantic cries above our heads.  The under-
brush thickened. Presently the gloom of the
hemlocks was over us, and in the midst of
the shadowy green a tulip tree flaunted its
leaves. Waves boomed and broke upon the
shore below. There was a growing dampness
as we went on, treading very lightly. A little
green snake ran coquettishly from us. A fat
and glossy squirrel chattered at us from a safe
height, stroking his whiskers with a com-
plaisant air.

At length we reached the "place." It was
a circle of velvet grass, bright as the first
blades of spring, delicate as fine sea-ferns.
The sunlight, falling down the shaft between
the hemlocks, flooded it with a softened light
and made the forest round about look like
deep purple velvet. My little godchild stood
in the midst and raised her wand impressively.

"This is my place," she said, with a sort of
wonderful gladness in her tone. "This is
where I come to the fairy balls. Do you see
them?"

"See what?" whispered one tiny boy.

"The fairies."

There was a silence. The older boy pulled
at my skirt.

"Do YOU see them?" he asked, his voice
trembling with expectancy.

"Indeed," I said, "I fear I am too old and
wicked to see fairies, and yet -- are their hats
red?"

"They are," laughed my little girl. "Their
hats are red, and as small -- as small!" She
held up the pearly nail of her wee finger to
give us the correct idea.

"And their shoes are very pointed at the
toes?"

"Oh, very pointed!"

"And their garments are green?"

"As green as grass."

"And they blow little horns?"

"The sweetest little horns!"

"I think I see them," I cried.

"We think we see them too," said the tiny
boys, laughing in perfect glee.

"And you hear their horns, don't you?" my
little godchild asked somewhat anxiously.

"Don't we hear their horns?" I asked the
tiny boys.

"We think we hear their horns," they cried.
"Don't you think we do?"

"It must be we do," I said. "Aren't we
very, very happy?"

We all laughed softly.   Then we kissed
each other and Elsbeth led us out, her wand
high in the air.

And so my feet found the lost path to
Arcady.

The next day I was called to the Pacific
coast, and duty kept me there till well into
December.  A few days before the date set
for my return to my home, a letter came from
Elsbeth's mother.

"Our little girl is gone into the Unknown,"
she wrote -- "that Unknown in which she
seemed to be forever trying to pry. We knew
she was going, and we told her. She was
quite brave, but she begged us to try some
way to keep her till after Christmas. 'My
presents are not finished yet,' she made moan.
'And I did so want to see what I was going
to have. You can't have a very happy Christ-
mas without me, I should think. Can you
arrange to keep me somehow till after then?'
We could not 'arrange' either with God in
heaven or science upon earth, and she is
gone."

She was only my little godchild, and I am
an old maid, with no business fretting over
children, but it seemed as if the medium of
light and beauty had been taken from me.
Through this crystal soul I had perceived
whatever was loveliest. However, what was,
was! I returned to my home and took up a
course of Egyptian history, and determined to
concern myself with nothing this side the
Ptolemies.

Her mother has told me how, on Christmas
eve, as usual, she and Elsbeth's father filled
the stockings of the little ones, and hung
them, where they had always hung, by the fire-
place.  They had little heart for the task,
but they had been prodigal that year in
their expenditures, and had heaped upon the
two tiny boys all the treasures they thought
would appeal to them.   They asked them-
selves how they could have been so insane
previously as to exercise economy at Christ-
mas time, and what they meant by not getting
Elsbeth the autoharp she had asked for the
year before.

"And now --" began her father, thinking
of harps. But he could not complete this
sentence, of course, and the two went on pas-
sionately and almost angrily with their task.
There were two stockings and two piles of
toys. Two stockings only, and only two piles
of toys! Two is very little!

They went away and left the darkened
room, and after a time they slept -- after a
long time. Perhaps that was about the time
the tiny boys awoke, and, putting on their
little dressing gowns and bed slippers, made
a dash for the room where the Christmas
things were always placed. The older one
carried a candle which gave out a feeble
light. The other followed behind through the
silent house. They were very impatient and
eager, but when they reached the door of the
sitting-room they stopped, for they saw that
another child was before them.

It was a delicate little creature, sitting in
her white night gown, with two rumpled
funny braids falling down her back, and she
seemed to be weeping. As they watched, she
arose, and putting out one slender finger as
a child does when she counts, she made sure
over and over again -- three sad times -- that
there were only two stockings and two piles
of toys! Only those and no more.

The little figure looked so familiar that the
boys started toward it, but just then, putting
up her arm and bowing her face in it, as
Elsbeth had been used to do when she wept
or was offended, the little thing glided away
and went out.   That's what the boys said.
It went out as a candle goes out.

They ran and woke their parents with the
tale, and all the house was searched in a
wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and
tumult! But nothing was found. For nights
they watched. But there was only the silent
house. Only the empty rooms.  They told
the boys they must have been mistaken. But
the boys shook their heads.

"We know our Elsbeth," said they.  "It
was our Elsbeth, cryin' 'cause she hadn't no
stockin' an' no toys, and we would have given
her all ours, only she went out -- jus' went
out!"

Alack!

The next Christmas I helped with the little
festival. It was none of my affair, but I asked
to help, and they let me, and when we were
all through there were three stockings and
three piles of toys, and in the largest one was
all the things that I could think of that my
dear child would love.   I locked the boys'
chamber that night, and I slept on the divan
in the parlor off the sitting-room. I slept but
little, and the night was very still -- so wind-
less and white and still that I think I must
have heard the slightest noise.   Yet I heard
none. Had I been in my grave I think my
ears would not have remained more unsaluted.

Yet when daylight came and I went to un-
lock the boys' bedchamber door, I saw that
the stocking and all the treasures which I had
bought for my little godchild were gone.
There was not a vestige of them remaining!

Of course we told the boys nothing. As
for me, after dinner I went home and buried
myself once more in my history, and so inter-
ested was I that midnight came without my
knowing it. I should not have looked up at
all, I suppose, to become aware of the time,
had it not been for a faint, sweet sound as of
a child striking a stringed instrument.  It
was so delicate and remote that I hardly
heard it, but so joyous and tender that I
could not but listen, and when I heard it a
second time it seemed as if I caught the echo
of a child's laugh.  At first I was puzzled.
Then I remembered the little autoharp I had
placed among the other things in that pile of
vanished toys. I said aloud:

"Farewell, dear little ghost.   Go rest.
Rest in joy, dear little ghost.   Farewell,
farewell."

That was years ago, but there has been
silence since.  Elsbeth was always an obe-
dient little thing.



A SPECTRAL COLLIE

WILLIAM PERCY CECIL happened
to be a younger son, so he left home
-- which was England -- and went
to Kansas to ranch it. Thousands
of younger sons do the same, only their des-
tination is not invariably Kansas.

An agent at Wichita picked out Cecil's
farm for him and sent the deeds over to Eng-
land before Cecil left. He said there was a
house on the place. So Cecil's mother fitted
him out for America just as she had fitted
out another superfluous boy for Africa, and
parted from him with an heroic front and big
agonies of mother-ache which she kept to
herself.

The boy bore up the way a man of his
blood ought, but when he went out to the
kennel to see Nita, his collie, he went to
pieces somehow, and rolled on the grass with
her in his arms and wept like a booby. But
the remarkable part of it was that Nita wept
too, big, hot dog tears which her master
wiped away. When he went off she howled
like a hungry baby, and had to be switched
before she would give any one a night's sleep.

When Cecil got over on his Kansas place
he fitted up the shack as cosily as he could,
and learned how to fry bacon and make soda
biscuits.   Incidentally, he did farming, and
sunk a heap of money, finding out how not
to do things.   Meantime, the Americans
laughed at him, and were inclined to turn
the cold shoulder, and his compatriots, of
whom there were a number in the county,
did not prove to his liking. They consoled
themselves for their exiled state in fashions
not in keeping with Cecil's traditions. His
homesickness went deeper than theirs, per-
haps, and American whiskey could not make
up for the loss of his English home, nor flir-
tations with the gay American village girls
quite compensate him for the loss of his
English mother. So he kept to himself and
had nostalgia as some men have consumption.

At length the loneliness got so bad that he
had to see some living thing from home, or
make a flunk of it and go back like a cry
baby. He had a stiff pride still, though he
sobbed himself to sleep more than one night,
as many a pioneer has done before him. So
he wrote home for Nita, the collie, and got
word that she would be sent. Arrangements
were made for her care all along the line, and
she was properly boxed and shipped.

As the time drew near for her arrival, Cecil
could hardly eat.   He was too excited to
apply himself to anything.  The day of her
expected arrival he actually got up at five
o'clock to clean the house and make it look
as fine as possible for her inspection. Then
he hitched up and drove fifteen miles to get
her.   The train pulled out just before he
reached the station, so Nita in her box was
waiting for him on the platform. He could
see her in a queer way, as one sees the purple
centre of a revolving circle of light; for, to
tell the truth, with the long ride in the morn-
ing sun, and the beating of his heart, Cecil
was only about half-conscious of anything.
He wanted to yell, but he didn't. He kept
himself in hand and lifted up the sliding
side of the box and called to Nita, and she
came out.

But it wasn't the man who fainted, though
he might have done so, being crazy home-
sick as he was, and half-fed and overworked
while he was yet soft from an easy life. No,
it was the dog! She looked at her master's
face, gave one cry of inexpressible joy, and
fell over in a real feminine sort of a faint,
and had to be brought to like any other lady,
with camphor and water and a few drops of
spirit down her throat.  Then Cecil got up
on the wagon seat, and she sat beside him
with her head on his arm, and they rode home
in absolute silence, each feeling too much for
speech. After they reached home, however,
Cecil showed her all over the place, and she
barked out her ideas in glad sociability.

After that Cecil and Nita were inseparable.
She walked beside him all day when he was
out with the cultivator, or when he was mow-
ing or reaping. She ate beside him at table
and slept across his feet at night. Evenings
when he looked over the Graphic from
home, or read the books his mother sent him,
that he might keep in touch with the world,
Nita was beside him, patient, but jealous.
Then, when he threw his book or paper down
and took her on his knee and looked into her
pretty eyes, or frolicked with her, she fairly
laughed with delight.

In short, she was faithful with that faith of
which only a dog is capable -- that unques-
tioning faith to which even the most loving
women never quite attain.

However, Fate was annoyed at this perfect
friendship. It didn't give her enough to do,
and Fate is a restless thing with a horrible
appetite for variety. So poor Nita died one
day mysteriously, and gave her last look to
Cecil as a matter of course; and he held her
paws till the last moment, as a stanch friend
should, and laid her away decently in a
pine box in the cornfield, where he could be
shielded from public view if he chose to go
there now and then and sit beside her grave.

He went to bed very lonely, indeed, the
first night. The shack seemed to him to be
removed endless miles from the other habi-
tations of men. He seemed cut off from the
world, and ached to hear the cheerful little
barks which Nita had been in the habit of
giving him by way of good night.  Her ami-
able eye with its friendly light was missing,
the gay wag of her tail was gone; all her
ridiculous ways, at which he was never tired
of laughing, were things of the past.

He lay down, busy with these thoughts,
yet so habituated to Nita's presence, that
when her weight rested upon his feet, as
usual, he felt no surprise.  But after a mo-
ment it came to him that as she was dead the
weight he felt upon his feet could not be
hers. And yet, there it was, warm and com-
fortable, cuddling down in the familiar way.
He actually sat up and put his hand down
to the foot of the bed to discover what was
there.   But there was nothing there, save
the weight. And that stayed with him that
night and many nights after.

It happened that Cecil was a fool, as men
will be when they are young, and he worked
too hard, and didn't take proper care of him-
self; and so it came about that he fell sick
with a low fever. He struggled around for a
few days, trying to work it off, but one morn-
ing he awoke only to the consciousness of
absurd dreams. He seemed to be on the sea,
sailing for home, and the boat was tossing
and pitching in a weary circle, and could
make no headway.  His heart was burning
with impatience, but the boat went round and
round in that endless circle till he shrieked
out with agony.

The next neighbors were the Taylors, who
lived two miles and a half away. They were
awakened that morning by the howling of a
dog before their door.   It was a hideous
sound and would give them no peace. So
Charlie Taylor got up and opened the door,
discovering there an excited little collie.

"Why, Tom," he called, "I thought Cecil's
collie was dead!"

"She is," called back Tom.

"No, she ain't neither, for here she is,
shakin' like an aspin, and a beggin' me to
go with her. Come out, Tom, and see."

It was Nita, no denying, and the men, per-
plexed, followed her to Cecil's shack, where
they found him babbling.

But that was the last of her. Cecil said he
never felt her on his feet again. She had
performed her final service for him, he said.
The neighbors tried to laugh at the story at
first, but they knew the Taylors wouldn't take
the trouble to lie, and as for Cecil, no one
would have ventured to chaff him.




THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT


BART FLEMING took his bride out
to his ranch on the plains when she
was but seventeen years old, and the
two set up housekeeping in three
hundred and twenty acres of corn and rye.
Off toward the west there was an unbroken
sea of tossing corn at that time of the year
when the bride came out, and as her sewing
window was on the side of the house which
faced the sunset, she passed a good part of
each day looking into that great rustling mass,
breathing in its succulent odors and listening
to its sibilant melody.   It was her picture
gallery, her opera, her spectacle, and, being
sensible, -- or perhaps, being merely happy,
-- she made the most of it.

When harvesting time came and the corn
was cut, she had much entertainment in dis-
covering what lay beyond. The town was
east, and it chanced that she had never rid-
den west.   So, when the rolling hills of this
newly beholden land lifted themselves for her
contemplation, and the harvest sun, all in an
angry and sanguinary glow sank in the veiled
horizon, and at noon a scarf of golden vapor
wavered up and down along the earth line, it
was as if a new world had been made for
her. Sometimes, at the coming of a storm,
a whip-lash of purple cloud, full of electric
agility, snapped along the western horizon.

"Oh, you'll see a lot of queer things on
these here plains," her husband said when
she spoke to him of these phenomena.  "I
guess what you see is the wind."

"The wind!" cried Flora. "You can't see
the wind, Bart."

"Now look here, Flora," returned Bart, with
benevolent emphasis, "you're a smart one,
but you don't know all I know about this here
country. I've lived here three mortal years,
waitin' for you to git up out of your mother's
arms and come out to keep me company,
and I know what there is to know.  Some
things out here is queer -- so queer folks
wouldn't believe 'em unless they saw. An'
some's so pig-headed they don't believe their
own eyes. As for th' wind, if you lay down
flat and squint toward th' west, you can see
it blowin' along near th' ground, like a big
ribbon; an' sometimes it's th' color of air,
an' sometimes it's silver an' gold, an' some-
times, when a storm is comin', it's purple."

"If you got so tired looking at the wind,
why didn't you marry some other girl, Bart,
instead of waiting for me?"

Flora was more interested in the first part
of Bart's speech than in the last.

"Oh, come on!" protested Bart, and he
picked her up in his arms and jumped her
toward the ceiling of the low shack as if she
were a little girl -- but then, to be sure, she
wasn't much more.

Of all the things Flora saw when the corn
was cut down, nothing interested her so much
as a low cottage, something like her own,
which lay away in the distance.  She could
not guess how far it might be, because dis-
tances are deceiving out there, where the alti-
tude is high and the air is as clear as one of
those mystic balls of glass in which the sallow
mystics of India see the moving shadows of
the future.

She had not known there were neighbors
so near, and she wondered for several days
about them before she ventured to say any-
thing to Bart on the subject.  Indeed, for
some reason which she did not attempt to ex-
plain to herself, she felt shy about broaching
the matter. Perhaps Bart did not want her
to know the people.  The thought came to
her, as naughty thoughts will come, even to
the best of persons, that some handsome
young men might be "baching" it out there
by themselves, and Bart didn't wish her to
make their acquaintance. Bart had flattered
her so much that she had actually begun to
think herself beautiful, though as a matter of
fact she was only a nice little girl with a lot
of reddish-brown hair, and a bright pair of
reddish-brown eyes in a white face.

"Bart," she ventured one evening, as the
sun, at its fiercest, rushed toward the great
black hollow of the west, "who lives over
there in that shack?"

She turned away from the window where
she had been looking at the incarnadined
disk, and she thought she saw Bart turn pale.
But then, her eyes were so blurred with the
glory she had been gazing at, that she might
easily have been mistaken.

"I say, Bart, why don't you speak?   If
there's any one around to associate with, I
should think you'd let me have the benefit
of their company. It isn't as funny as you
think, staying here alone days and days."

"You ain't gettin' homesick, be you, sweet-
heart?" cried Bart, putting his arms around
her. "You ain't gettin' tired of my society,
be yeh?"

It took some time to answer this question
in a satisfactory manner, but at length Flora
was able to return to her original topic.

"But the shack, Bart! Who lives there,
anyway?"

"I'm not acquainted with 'em," said Bart,
sharply. "Ain't them biscuits done, Flora?"

Then, of course, she grew obstinate.

"Those biscuits will never be done, Bart,
till I know about that house, and why you
never spoke of it, and why nobody ever comes
down the road from there. Some one lives
there I know, for in the mornings and at night
I see the smoke coming out of the chimney."

"Do you now?" cried Bart, opening his
eyes and looking at her with unfeigned inter-
est.  "Well, do you know, sometimes I've
fancied I seen that too?"

"Well, why not," cried Flora, in half anger.
"Why shouldn't you?"

"See here, Flora, take them biscuits out an'
listen to me. There ain't no house there.
Hello! I didn't know you'd go for to drop the
biscuits.   Wait, I'll help you pick 'em up.
By cracky, they're hot, ain't they? What you
puttin' a towel over 'em for? Well, you set
down here on my knee, so. Now you look
over at that there house. You see it, don't
yeh? Well, it ain't there! No! I saw it the
first week I was out here. I was jus' half
dyin', thinkin' of you an' wonderin' why you
didn't write. That was the time you was mad
at me. So I rode over there one day -- lookin'
up company, so t' speak -- and there wa'n't no
house there. I spent all one Sunday lookin'
for it. Then I spoke to Jim Geary about it.
He laughed an' got a little white about th'
gills, an' he said he guessed I'd have to look
a good while before I found it. He said that
there shack was an ole joke."

"Why -- what --"

"Well, this here is th' story he tol' me.
He said a man an' his wife come out here t'
live an' put up that there little place.  An'
she was young, you know, an' kind o' skeery,
and she got lonesome. It worked on her an'
worked on her, an' one day she up an' killed
the baby an' her husband an' herself.  Th'
folks found 'em and buried 'em right there
on their own ground. Well, about two weeks
after that, th' house was burned down. Don't
know how.   Tramps, maybe.   Anyhow, it
burned. At least, I guess it burned!"

"You guess it burned!"

"Well, it ain't there, you know."

"But if it burned the ashes are there."

"All right, girlie, they're there then. Now
let's have tea."

This they proceeded to do, and were happy
and cheerful all evening, but that didn't keep
Flora from rising at the first flush of dawn and
stealing out of the house. She looked away
over west as she went to the barn and there,
dark and firm against the horizon, stood the
little house against the pellucid sky of morn-
ing.   She got on Ginger's back -- Ginger
being her own yellow broncho -- and set off at
a hard pace for the house. It didn't appear
to come any nearer, but the objects which had
seemed to be beside it came closer into view,
and Flora pressed on, with her mind steeled
for anything. But as she approached the
poplar windbreak which stood to the north
of the house, the little shack waned like a
shadow before her. It faded and dimmed
before her eyes.

She slapped Ginger's flanks and kept him
going, and she at last got him up to the spot.
But there was nothing there. The bunch grass
grew tall and rank and in the midst of it lay
a baby's shoe. Flora thought of picking it
up, but something cold in her veins withheld
her. Then she grew angry, and set Ginger's
head toward the place and tried to drive him
over it. But the yellow broncho gave one
snort of fear, gathered himself in a bunch,
and then, all tense, leaping muscles, made
for home as only a broncho can.



STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE


VIRGIL HOYT is a photographer's
assistant up at St. Paul, and enjoys
his work without being consumed
by it. He has been in search of the
picturesque all over the West and hundreds
of miles to the north, in Canada, and can
speak three or four Indian dialects and put a
canoe through the rapids.   That is to say,
he is a man of adventure, and no dreamer.
He can fight well and shoot better, and swim
so as to put up a winning race with the Ind-
ian boys, and he can sit in the saddle all day
and not worry about it to-morrow.

Wherever he goes, he carries a camera.

"The world," Hoyt is in the habit of say-
ing to those who sit with him when he smokes
his pipe, "was created in six days to be pho-
tographed. Man -- and particularly woman --
was made for the same purpose. Clouds are
not made to give moisture nor trees to cast
shade. They have been created in order to
give the camera obscura something to do."

In short, Virgil Hoyt's view of the world
is whimsical, and he likes to be bothered
neither with the disagreeable nor the mysteri-
ous. That is the reason he loathes and detests
going to a house of mourning to photograph
a corpse. The bad taste of it offends him,
but above all, he doesn't like the necessity of
shouldering, even for a few moments, a part
of the burden of sorrow which belongs to
some one else.   He dislikes sorrow, and
would willingly canoe five hundred miles up
the cold Canadian rivers to get rid of it.
Nevertheless, as assistant photographer, it is
often his duty to do this very kind of thing.

Not long ago he was sent for by a rich Jew-
ish family to photograph the remains of the
mother, who had just died. He was put out,
but he was only an assistant, and he went.
He was taken to the front parlor, where the
dead woman lay in her coffin. It was evident
to him that there was some excitement in the
household, and that a discussion was going on.
But Hoyt said to himself that it didn't con-
cern him, and he therefore paid no attention
to it.

The daughter wanted the coffin turned on
end in order that the corpse might face the
camera properly, but Hoyt said he could over-
come the recumbent attitude and make it ap-
pear that the face was taken in the position
it would naturally hold in life, and so they
went out and left him alone with the dead.

The face of the deceased was a strong and
positive one, such as may often be seen among
Jewish matrons. Hoyt regarded it with some
admiration, thinking to himself that she was a
woman who had known what she wanted, and
who, once having made up her mind, would
prove immovable. Such a character appealed
to Hoyt. He reflected that he might have
married if only he could have found a woman
with strength of character sufficient to disagree
with him. There was a strand of hair out of
place on the dead woman's brow, and he
gently pushed it back. A bud lifted its head
too high from among the roses on her breast
and spoiled the contour of the chin, so he
broke it off.   He remembered these things
later with keen distinctness, and that his hand
touched her chill face two or three times in
the making of his arrangements.

Then he took the impression, and left the
house.

He was busy at the time with some railroad
work, and several days passed before he found
opportunity to develop the plates.  He took
them from the bath in which they had lain
with a number of others, and went energeti-
cally to work upon them, whistling some very
saucy songs he had learned of the guide in
the Red River country, and trying to forget
that the face which was presently to appear
was that of a dead woman.   He had used
three plates as a precaution against accident,
and they came up well. But as they devel-
oped, he became aware of the existence of
something in the photograph which had not
been apparent to his eye in the subject. He
was irritated, and without attempting to face
the mystery, he made a few prints and laid
them aside, ardently hoping that by some
chance they would never be called for.

However, as luck would have it, -- and
Hoyt's luck never had been good, -- his em-
ployer asked one day what had become of
those photographs.   Hoyt tried to evade
making an answer, but the effort was futile,
and he had to get out the finished prints and
exhibit them. The older man sat staring at
them a long time.

"Hoyt," he said, "you're a young man, and
very likely you have never seen anything like
this before. But I have. Not exactly the same
thing, perhaps, but similar phenomena have
come my way a number of times since I went in
the business, and I want to tell you there are
things in heaven and earth not dreamt of --"

"Oh, I know all that tommy-rot," cried
Hoyt, angrily, "but when anything happens I
want to know the reason why and how it is
done."

"All right," answered his employer, "then
you might explain why and how the sun rises."

But he humored the young man sufficiently
to examine with him the baths in which the
plates were submerged, and the plates them-
selves. All was as it should be; but the mys-
tery was there, and could not be done away
with.

Hoyt hoped against hope that the friends
of the dead woman would somehow forget
about the photographs; but the idea was un-
reasonable, and one day, as a matter of
course, the daughter appeared and asked to
see the pictures of her mother.

"Well, to tell the truth," stammered Hoyt,
"they didn't come out quite -- quite as well
as we could wish."

"But let me see them," persisted the lady.
"I'd like to look at them anyhow."

"Well, now," said Hoyt, trying to be
soothing, as he believed it was always best
to be with women, -- to tell the truth he was
an ignoramus where women were concerned,
-- "I think it would be better if you didn't
look at them.  There are reasons why --"
he ambled on like this, stupid man that he
was, till the lady naturally insisted upon see-
ing the pictures without a moment's delay.

So poor Hoyt brought them out and placed
them in her hand, and then ran for the water
pitcher, and had to be at the bother of bath-
ing her forehead to keep her from fainting.

For what the lady saw was this: Over face
and flowers and the head of the coffin fell a
thick veil, the edges of which touched the
floor in some places.  It covered the feat-
ures so well that not a hint of them was
visible.

"There was nothing over mother's face!"
cried the lady at length.

"Not a thing," acquiesced Hoyt.   "I
know, because I had occasion to touch her
face just before I took the picture. I put
some of her hair back from her brow."

"What does it mean, then?" asked the
lady.

"You know better than I. There is no ex-
planation in science. Perhaps there is some
in -- in psychology."

"Well," said the young woman, stammer-
ing a little and coloring, "mother was a good
woman, but she always wanted her own way,
and she always had it, too."

"Yes."

"And she never would have her picture
taken. She didn't admire her own appear-
ance. She said no one should ever see a
picture of her."

"So?" said Hoyt, meditatively.   "Well,
she's kept her word, hasn't she?"

The two stood looking at the photographs
for a time. Then Hoyt pointed to the open
blaze in the grate.

"Throw them in," he commanded. "Don't
let your father see them -- don't keep them
yourself. They wouldn't be agreeable things
to keep."

"That's true enough," admitted the lady.
And she threw them in the fire. Then Vir-
gil Hoyt brought out the plates and broke
them before her eyes.

And that was the end of it -- except that
Hoyt sometimes tells the story to those who
sit beside him when his pipe is lighted.




A CHILD OF THE RAIN


IT was the night that Mona Meeks,
the dressmaker, told him she
didn't love him.   He couldn't
believe it at first, because he had
so long been accustomed to the idea that she
did, and no matter how rough the weather or
how irascible the passengers, he felt a song
in his heart as he punched transfers, and rang
his bell punch, and signalled the driver when
to let people off and on.

Now, suddenly, with no reason except a
woman's, she had changed her mind.   He
dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just
before time for the night shift, and to give
her two red apples he had been saving for her.
She looked at the apples as if they were in-
visible and she could not see them, and stand-
ing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor,
with its cuttings and scraps and litter of fab-
rics, she said:

"It is no use, John. I shall have to work
here like this all my life -- work here alone.
For I don't love you, John. No, I don't. I
thought I did, but it is a mistake."

"You mean it?" asked John, bringing up
the words in a great gasp.

"Yes," she said, white and trembling and
putting out her hands as if to beg for his
mercy.  And then -- big, lumbering fool --
he turned around and strode down the stairs
and stood at the corner in the beating rain
waiting for his car. It came along at length,
spluttering on the wet rails and spitting out
blue fire, and he took his shift after a
gruff "Good night" to Johnson, the man he
relieved.

He was glad the rain was bitter cold and
drove in his face fiercely.   He rejoiced at
the cruelty of the wind, and when it hustled
pedestrians before it, lashing them, twisting
their clothes, and threatening their equilib-
rium, he felt amused.   He was pleased at
the chill in his bones and at the hunger that
tortured him. At least, at first he thought it
was hunger till he remembered that he had
just eaten.  The hours passed confusedly.
He had no consciousness of time. But it
must have been late, -- near midnight, --
judging by the fact that there were few per-
sons visible anywhere in the black storm,
when he noticed a little figure sitting at the
far end of the car.   He had not seen the
child when she got on, but all was so curious
and wild to him that evening -- he himself
seemed to himself the most curious and the
wildest of all things -- that it was not surpris-
ing that he should not have observed the little
creature.

She was wrapped in a coat so much too
large that it had become frayed at the bottom
from dragging on the pavement. Her hair
hung in unkempt stringiness about her bent
shoulders, and her feet were covered with
old arctics, many sizes too big, from which
the soles hung loose.

Beside the little figure was a chest of dark
wood, with curiously wrought hasps. From
this depended a stout strap by which it could
be carried over the shoulders. John Billings
stared in, fascinated by the poor little thing
with its head sadly drooping upon its breast,
its thin blue hands relaxed upon its lap, and
its whole attitude so suggestive of hunger,
loneliness, and fatigue, that he made up his
mind he would collect no fare from it.

"It will need its nickel for breakfast," he
said to himself. "The company can stand
this for once. Or, come to think of it, I
might celebrate my hard luck. Here's to the
brotherhood of failures!" And he took a
nickel from one pocket of his great-coat and
dropped it in another, ringing his bell punch
to record the transfer.

The car plunged along in the darkness, and
the rain beat more viciously than ever in his
face. The night was full of the rushing sound
of the storm. Owing to some change of tem-
perature the glass of the car became obscured
so that the young conductor could no longer
see the little figure distinctly, and he grew
anxious about the child.

"I wonder if it's all right," he said to him-
self. "I never saw living creature sit so still."

He opened the car door, intending to speak
with the child, but just then something went
wrong with the lights. There was a blue and
green flickering, then darkness, a sudden halt-
ing of the car, and a great sweep of wind and
rain in at the door. When, after a moment,
light and motion reasserted themselves, and
Billings had got the door together, he turned
to look at the little passenger. But the car
was empty.

It was a fact. There was no child there --
not even moisture on the seat where she had
been sitting.

"Bill," said he, going to the front door and
addressing the driver, "what became of that
little kid in the old cloak?"

"I didn't see no kid," said Bill, crossly.
"For Gawd's sake, close the door, John, and
git that draught off my back."

"Draught!" said John, indignantly, "where's
the draught?"

"You've left the hind door open," growled
Bill, and John saw him shivering as a blast
struck him and ruffled the fur on his bear-skin
coat. But the door was not open, and yet
John had to admit to himself that the car
seemed filled with wind and a strange
coldness.

However, it didn't matter. Nothing mat-
tered! Still, it was as well no doubt to look
under the seats just to make sure no little
crouching figure was there, and so he did.
But there was nothing. In fact, John said to
himself, he seemed to be getting expert in
finding nothing where there ought to be some-
thing.

He might have stayed in the car, for there
was no likelihood of more passengers that
evening, but somehow he preferred going out
where the rain could drench him and the
wind pommel him. How horribly tired he
was! If there were only some still place away
from the blare of the city where a man could
lie down and listen to the sound of the sea
or the storm -- or if one could grow suddenly
old and get through with the bother of living
-- or if --

The car gave a sudden lurch as it rounded
a curve, and for a moment it seemed to be
a mere chance whether Conductor Billings
would stay on his platform or go off under
those fire-spitting wheels.   He caught in-
stinctively at his brake, saved himself, and
stood still for a moment, panting.

"I must have dozed," he said to himself.

Just then, dimly, through the blurred win-
dow, he saw again the little figure of the
child, its head on its breast as before, its
blue hands lying in its lap and the curious
box beside it. John Billings felt a coldness
beyond the coldness of the night run through
his blood. Then, with a half-stifled cry, he
threw back the door, and made a desperate
spring at the corner where the eerie thing
sat.

And he touched the green carpeting on the
seat, which was quite dry and warm, as if no
dripping, miserable little wretch had ever
crouched there.

He rushed to the front door.

"Bill," he roared, "I want to know about
that kid."

"What kid?"

"The same kid! The wet one with the old
coat and the box with iron hasps! The one
that's been sitting here in the car!"

Bill turned his surly face to confront the
young conductor.

"You've been drinking, you fool," said he.
"Fust thing you know you'll be reported."

The conductor said not a word. He went
slowly and weakly back to his post and stood
there the rest of the way leaning against the
end of the car for support. Once or twice
he muttered:

"The poor little brat!"  And again he
said, "So you didn't love me after all!"

He never knew how he reached home, but
he sank to sleep as dying men sink to death.
All the same, being a hearty young man, he
was on duty again next day but one, and
again the night was rainy and cold.

It was the last run, and the car was spin-
ning along at its limit, when there came a
sudden soft shock. John Billings knew what
that meant.  He had felt something of the
kind once before. He turned sick for a
moment, and held on to the brake.   Then
he summoned his courage and went around
to the side of the car, which had stopped.
Bill, the driver, was before him, and had a
limp little figure in his arms, and was carry-
ing it to the gaslight. John gave one look
and cried:

"It's the same kid, Bill! The one I told
you of!"

True as truth were the ragged coat dangling
from the pitiful body, the little blue hands,
the thin shoulders, the stringy hair, the big
arctics on the feet. And in the road not far
off was the curious chest of dark wood with
iron hasps.

"She ran under the car deliberate!" cried
Bill. "I yelled to her, but she looked at me
and ran straight on!"

He was white in spite of his weather-beaten
skin.

"I guess you wasn't drunk last night after
all, John," said he.

"You -- you are sure the kid is -- is there?"
gasped John.

"Not so damned sure!" said Bill.

But a few minutes later it was taken away
in a patrol wagon, and with it the little box
with iron hasps.




THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT


THEY called it the room of the Evil
Thought. It was really the pleas-
antest room in the house, and
when the place had been used as
the rectory, was the minister's study.   It
looked out on a mournful clump of larches,
such as may often be seen in the old-fash-
ioned yards in Michigan, and these threw a
tender gloom over the apartment.

There was a wide fireplace in the room,
and it had been the young minister's habit
to sit there hours and hours, staring ahead of
him at the fire, and smoking moodily. The
replenishing of the fire and of his pipe, it
was said, would afford him occupation all
the day long, and that was how it came about
that his parochial duties were neglected so
that, little by little, the people became dis-
satisfied with him, though he was an eloquent
young man, who could send his congregation
away drunk on his influence. However, the
calmer pulsed among his parish began to
whisper that it was indeed the influence of
the young minister and not that of the Holy
Ghost which they felt, and it was finally
decided that neither animal magnetism nor
hypnotism were good substitutes for religion.
And so they let him go.

The new rector moved into a smart brick
house on the other side of the church, and
gave receptions and dinner parties, and was
punctilious about making his calls.   The
people therefore liked him very much -- so
much that they raised the debt on the church
and bought a chime of bells, in their enthu-
siasm. Every one was lighter of heart than
under the ministration of the previous rector.
A burden appeared to be lifted from the com-
munity. True, there were a few who con-
fessed the new man did not give them the
food for thought which the old one had done,
but, then, the former rector had made them
uncomfortable! He had not only made them
conscious of the sins of which they were
already guilty, but also of those for which
they had the latent capacity. A strange and
fatal man, whom women loved to their sor-
row, and whom simple men could not under-
stand! It was generally agreed that the parish
was well rid of him.

"He was a genius," said the people in
commiseration.   The word was an uncom-
plimentary epithet with them.

When the Hanscoms moved in the house
which had been the old rectory, they gave
Grandma Hanscom the room with the fire-
place.   Grandma was well pleased.   The
roaring fire warmed her heart as well as her
chill old body, and she wept with weak joy
when she looked at the larches, because they
reminded her of the house she had lived in
when she was first married. All the forenoon
of the first day she was busy putting things
away in bureau drawers and closets, but by
afternoon she was ready to sit down in her
high-backed rocker and enjoy the comforts of
her room.

She nodded a bit before the fire, as she
usually did after luncheon, and then she
awoke with an awful start and sat staring
before her with such a look in her gentle,
filmy old eyes as had never been there before.
She did not move, except to rock slightly,
and the Thought grew and grew till her face
was disguised as by some hideous mask of
tragedy.

By and by the children came pounding at
the door.

"Oh, grandma, let us in, please.  We
want to see your new room, and mamma
gave us some ginger cookies on a plate, and
we want to give some to you."

The door gave way under their assaults, and
the three little ones stood peeping in, wait-
ing for permission to enter. But it did not
seem to be their grandma -- their own dear
grandma -- who arose and tottered toward
them in fierce haste, crying:

"Away, away! Out of my sight! Out of
my sight before I do the thing I want to do!
Such a terrible thing! Send some one to me
quick, children, children! Send some one
quick!"

They fled with feet shod with fear, and
their mother came, and Grandma Hanscom
sank down and clung about her skirts and
sobbed:

"Tie me, Miranda. Make me fast to the
bed or the wall. Get some one to watch me.
For I want to do an awful thing!"

They put the trembling old creature in bed,
and she raved there all the night long and
cried out to be held, and to be kept from
doing the fearful thing, whatever it was -- for
she never said what it was.

The next morning some one suggested tak-
ing her in the sitting-room where she would
be with the family. So they laid her on the
sofa, hemmed around with cushions, and
before long she was her quiet self again,
though exhausted, naturally, with the tumult
of the previous night. Now and then, as the
children played about her, a shadow crept
over her face -- a shadow as of cold remem-
brance -- and  then the  perplexed  tears
followed.

When she seemed as well as ever they put
her back in her room. But though the fire
glowed and the lamp burned, as soon as ever
she was alone they heard her shrill cries ring-
ing to them that the Evil Thought had come
again.  So Hal, who was home from col-
lege, carried her up to his room, which
she seemed to like very well. Then he went
down to have a smoke before grandma's
fire.

The next morning he was absent from break-
fast. They thought he might have gone for
an early walk, and waited for him a few min-
utes. Then his sister went to the room that
looked upon the larches, and found him
dressed and pacing the floor with a face set
and stern. He had not been in bed at all,
as she saw at once. His eyes were bloodshot,
his face stricken as if with old age or sin or
-- but she could not make it out. When he
saw her he sank in a chair and covered his
face with his hands, and between the trembling
fingers she could see drops of perspiration on
his forehead.

"Hal!" she cried, "Hal, what is it?"

But for answer he threw his arms about the
little table and clung to it, and looked at her
with tortured eyes, in which she fancied she
saw a gleam of hate. She ran, screaming,
from the room, and her father came and went
up to him and laid his hands on the boy's
shoulders.   And then a fearful thing hap-
pened. All the family saw it. There could
be no mistake. Hal's hands found their way
with frantic eagerness toward his father's
throat as if they would choke him, and the
look in his eyes was so like a madman's that
his father raised his fist and felled him as he
used to fell men years before in the college
fights, and then dragged him into the sitting-
room and wept over him.

By evening, however, Hal was all right, and
the family said it must have been a fever, --
perhaps from overstudy, -- at which Hal cov-
ertly smiled.   But his father was still too
anxious about him to let him out of his sight,
so he put him on a cot in his room, and thus
it chanced that the mother and Grace con-
cluded to sleep together downstairs.

The two women made a sort of festival of
it, and drank little cups of chocolate before
the fire, and undid and brushed their brown
braids, and smiled at each other, understand-
ingly, with that sweet intuitive sympathy
which women have, and Grace told her
mother a number of things which she had
been waiting for just such an auspicious oc-
casion to confide.

But the larches were noisy and cried out
with wild voices, and the flame of the fire
grew blue and swirled about in the draught
sinuously, so that a chill crept upon the two.
Something cold appeared to envelop them --
such a chill as pleasure voyagers feel when
a berg steals beyond Newfoundland and
glows blue and threatening upon their ocean
path.

Then came something else which was not
cold, but hot as the flames of hell -- and they
saw red, and stared at each other with mad-
dened eyes, and then ran together from the
room and clasped in close embrace safe
beyond the fatal place, and thanked God
they had not done the thing that they dared
not speak of -- the thing which suddenly came
to them to do.

So they called it the room of the Evil
Thought.   They could not account for it.
They avoided the thought of it, being healthy
and happy folk.  But none entered it more.
The door was locked.

One day, Hal, reading the paper, came
across a paragraph concerning the young min-
ister who had once lived there, and who had
thought and written there and so influenced
the lives of those about him that they remem-
bered him even while they disapproved.

"He cut a man's throat on board ship for
Australia," said he, "and then he cut his own,
without fatal effect -- and jumped overboard,
and so ended it. What a strange thing!"

Then they all looked at one another with
subtle looks, and a shadow fell upon them
and stayed the blood at their hearts.

The next week the room of the Evil Thought
was pulled down to make way for a pansy bed,
which is quite gay and innocent, and blooms
all the better because the larches, with their
eternal murmuring, have been laid low and
carted away to the sawmill.




STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT


THERE had always been strange
stories about the house, but it
was a sensible, comfortable sort
of a neighborhood, and people
took pains to say to one another that there
was nothing in these tales -- of course not!
Absolutely nothing! How could there be?
It was a matter of common remark, however,
that considering the amount of money the
Nethertons had spent on the place, it was
curious they lived there so little. They were
nearly always away, -- up North in the sum-
mer and down South in the winter, and over
to Paris or London now and then, -- and when
they did come home it was only to entertain
a number of guests from the city. The place
was either plunged in gloom or gayety. The
old gardener who kept house by himself in
the cottage at the back of the yard had things
much his own way by far the greater part of
the time.

Dr. Block and his wife lived next door to
the Nethertons, and he and his wife, who
were so absurd as to be very happy in each
other's company, had the benefit of the beau-
tiful yard. They walked there mornings when
the leaves were silvered with dew, and even-
ings they sat beside the lily pond and listened
for the whip-poor-will.   The doctor's wife
moved her room over to that side of the
house which commanded a view of the yard,
and thus made the honeysuckles and laurel
and clematis and all the masses of tossing
greenery her own. Sitting there day after
day with her sewing, she speculated about the
mystery which hung impalpably yet undeniably
over the house.

It happened one night when she and her
husband had gone to their room, and were
congratulating themselves on the fact that he
had no very sick patients and was likely to
enjoy a good night's rest, that a ring came at
the door.

"If it's any one wanting you to leave
home," warned his wife, "you must tell them
you are all worn out. You've been disturbed
every night this week, and it's too much!"

The young physician went downstairs. At
the door stood a man whom he had never
seen before.

"My wife is lying very ill next door," said
the stranger, "so ill that I fear she will not
live till morning. Will you please come to
her at once?"

"Next door?" cried the physician.  "I
didn't know the Nethertons were home!"

"Please hasten," begged the man. "I must
go back to her. Follow as quickly as you
can."

The doctor went back upstairs to complete
his toilet.

"How absurd," protested his wife when she
heard the story. "There is no one at the
Nethertons'. I sit where I can see the front
door, and no one can enter without my know-
ing it, and I have been sewing by the window
all day. If there were any one in the house,
the gardener would have the porch lantern
lighted. It is some plot. Some one has
designs on you. You must not go."

But he went. As he left the room his wife
placed a revolver in his pocket.

The great porch of the mansion was dark,
but the physician made out that the door was
open, and he entered. A feeble light came
from the bronze lamp at the turn of the stairs,
and by it he found his way, his feet sinking
noiselessly in the rich carpets. At the head
of the stairs the man met him. The doctor
thought himself a tall man, but the stranger
topped him by half a head.  He motioned
the physician to follow him, and the two went
down the hall to the front room. The place
was flushed with a rose-colored glow from
several lamps. On a silken couch, in the
midst of pillows, lay a woman dying with
consumption.  She was like a lily, white,
shapely, graceful, with feeble yet charming
movements. She looked at the doctor ap-
pealingly, then, seeing in his eyes the in-
voluntary verdict that her hour was at hand,
she turned toward her companion with a
glance of anguish. Dr. Block asked a few
questions.   The man answered them, the
woman remaining silent. The physician ad-
ministered something stimulating, and then
wrote a prescription which he placed on the
mantel-shelf.

"The drug store is closed to-night," he
said, "and I fear the druggist has gone home.
You can have the prescription filled the first
thing in the morning, and I will be over
before breakfast."

After that, there was no reason why he
should not have gone home.   Yet, oddly
enough, he preferred to stay. Nor was it
professional anxiety that prompted this delay.
He longed to watch those mysterious per-
sons, who, almost oblivious of his presence,
were speaking their mortal farewells in their
glances, which were impassioned and of un-
utterable sadness.

He sat as if fascinated.  He watched the
glitter of rings on the woman's long, white
hands, he noted the waving of light hair
about her temples, he observed the details of
her gown of soft white silk which fell about
her in voluminous folds. Now and then the
man gave her of the stimulant which the doc-
tor had provided; sometimes he bathed her
face with water. Once he paced the floor
for a moment till a motion of her hand
quieted him.

After a time, feeling that it would be more
sensible and considerate of him to leave, the
doctor made his way home.   His wife was
awake, impatient to hear of his experiences.
She listened to his tale in silence, and when
he had finished she turned her face to the
wall and made no comment.

"You seem to be ill, my dear," he said.
"You have a chill. You are shivering."

"I have no chill," she replied sharply.
"But I -- well, you may leave the light
burning."

The next morning before breakfast the doc-
tor crossed the dewy sward to the Netherton
house.  The front door was locked, and no
one answered to his repeated ringings. The
old gardener chanced to be cutting the grass
near at hand, and he came running up.

"What you ringin' that door-bell for, doc-
tor?" said he. "The folks ain't come home
yet. There ain't nobody there."

"Yes, there is, Jim. I was called here last
night. A man came for me to attend his
wife. They must both have fallen asleep that
the bell is not answered. I wouldn't be sur-
prised to find her dead, as a matter of fact.
She was a desperately sick woman. Perhaps
she is dead and something has happened to
him. You have the key to the door, Jim.
Let me in."

But the old man was shaking in every limb,
and refused to do as he was bid.

"Don't you never go in there, doctor,"
whispered he, with chattering teeth. "Don't
you go for to 'tend no one. You jus' come
tell me when you sent for that way. No, I
ain't goin' in, doctor, nohow. It ain't part
of my duties to go in. That's been stipulated
by Mr. Netherton. It's my business to look
after the garden."

Argument was useless. Dr. Block took the
bunch of keys from the old man's pocket and
himself unlocked the front door and entered.
He mounted the steps and made his way to
the upper room. There was no evidence of
occupancy. The place was silent, and, so far
as living creature went, vacant. The dust lay
over everything.   It covered the delicate
damask of the sofa where he had seen the
dying woman. It rested on the pillows. The
place smelled musty and evil, as if it had not
been used for a long time. The lamps of the
room held not a drop of oil.

But on the mantel-shelf was the prescrip-
tion which the doctor had written the night
before. He read it, folded it, and put it in
his pocket.

As he locked the outside door the old gar-
dener came running to him.

"Don't you never go up there again, will
you?" he pleaded, "not unless you see all the
Nethertons home and I come for you myself.
You won't, doctor?"

"No," said the doctor.

When he told his wife she kissed him, and
said:

"Next time when I tell you to stay at home,
you must stay!"




THE PIANO NEXT DOOR


BABETTE had gone away for the
summer; the furniture was in its
summer linens; the curtains were
down, and Babette's husband, John
Boyce, was alone in the house. It was the
first year of his marriage, and he missed
Babette. But then, as he often said to him-
self, he ought never to have married her. He
did it from pure selfishness, and because he
was determined to possess the most illusive,
tantalizing, elegant, and utterly unmoral little
creature that the sun shone upon. He wanted
her because she reminded him of birds, and
flowers, and summer winds, and other exqui-
site things created for the delectation of
mankind. He neither expected nor desired
her to think. He had half-frightened her into
marrying him, had taken her to a poor man's
home, provided her with no society such as
she had been accustomed to, and he had no
reasonable cause of complaint when she
answered the call of summer and flitted away,
like a butterfly in the morning sunshine, to
the place where the flowers grew.

He wrote to her every evening, sitting in
the stifling, ugly house, and poured out his
soul as if it were a libation to a goddess.
She sometimes answered by telegraph, some-
times by a perfumed note. He schooled him-
self not to feel hurt. Why should Babette
write? Does a goldfinch indict epistles; or
a humming-bird study composition; or a
glancing, red-scaled fish in summer shallows
consider the meaning of words?

He knew at the beginning what Babette was
-- guessed her limitations -- trembled when
he buttoned her tiny glove -- kissed her dainty
slipper when he found it in the closet after
she was gone -- thrilled at the sound of her
laugh, or the memory of it!  That was all.
A mere case of love.  He was in bonds.
Babette was not.   Therefore he was in the
city, working overhours to pay for Babette's
pretty follies down at the seaside.  It was
quite right and proper. He was a grub in
the furrow; she a lark in the blue. Those
had always been and always must be their
relative positions.

Having attained a mood of philosophic
calm, in which he was prepared to spend his
evenings alone -- as became a grub -- and to
await with dignified patience the return of
his wife, it was in the nature of an inconsist-
ency that he should have walked the floor of
the dull little drawing-room like a lion in
cage. It did not seem in keeping with the
position of superior serenity which he had
assumed, that, reading Babette's notes, he
should have raged with jealousy, or that, in
the loneliness of his unkempt chamber, he
should have stretched out arms of longing.
Even if Babette had been present, she would
only have smiled her gay little smile and co-
quetted with him. She could not understand.
He had known, of course, from the first mo-
ment, that she could not understand! And
so, why the ache, ache, ache of the heart!
Or WAS it the heart, or the brain, or the
soul?

Sometimes, when the evenings were so hot
that he could not endure the close air of the
house, he sat on the narrow, dusty front porch
and looked about him at his neighbors. The
street had once been smart and aspiring, but
it had fallen into decay and dejection. Pale
young men, with flurried-looking wives, seemed
to Boyce to occupy most of the houses. Some-
times three or four couples would live in one
house. Most of these appeared to be child-
less. The women made a pretence at fashion-
able dressing, and wore their hair elaborately
in fashions which somehow suggested board-
ing-houses to Boyce, though he could not
have told why. Every house in the block
needed fresh paint. Lacking this renovation,
the householders tried to make up for it by
a display of lace curtains which, at every
window, swayed in the smoke-weighted breeze.
Strips of carpeting were laid down the front
steps of the houses where the communities of
young couples lived, and here, evenings, the
inmates of the houses gathered, committing
mild extravagances such as the treating of each
other to ginger ale, or beer, or ice-cream.

Boyce watched these tawdry makeshifts at
sociability with bitterness and loathing.   He
wondered how he could have been such a
fool as to bring his exquisite Babette to this
neighborhood.   How could he expect that
she would return to him? It was not reason-
able. He ought to go down on his knees
with gratitude that she even condescended to
write him.

Sitting one night till late, -- so late that the
fashionable young wives with their husbands
had retired from the strips of stair carpeting,
-- and raging at the loneliness which ate at
his heart like a cancer, he heard, softly creep-
ing through the windows of the house adjoin-
ing his own, the sound of comfortable mel-
ody.

It breathed upon his ear like a spirit of
consolation, speaking of peace, of love which
needs no reward save its own sweetness, of
aspiration which looks forever beyond the
thing of the hour to find attainment in that
which is eternal. So insidiously did it whis-
per these things, so delicately did the simple
and perfect melodies creep upon the spirit --
that Boyce felt no resentment, but from the
first listened as one who listens to learn, or
as one who, fainting on the hot road, hears, far
in the ferny deeps below, the gurgle of a spring.

Then came harmonies more intricate: fair
fabrics of woven sound, in the midst of which
gleamed golden threads of joy; a tapestry of
sound, multi-tinted, gallant with story and
achievement, and beautiful things.   Boyce,
sitting on his absurd piazza, with his knees
jambed against the balustrade, and his chair
back against the dun-colored wall of his
house, seemed to be walking in the cathedral
of the redwood forest, with blue above him,
a vast hymn in his ears, pungent perfume in
his nostrils, and mighty shafts of trees lifting
themselves to heaven, proud and erect as pure
men before their Judge. He stood on a
mountain at sunrise, and saw the marvels of
the amethystine clouds below his feet, heard
an eternal and white silence, such as broods
among the everlasting snows, and saw an eagle
winging for the sun.  He was in a city, and
away from him, diverging like the spokes of
a wheel, ran thronging streets, and to his sense
came the beat, beat, beat of the city's heart.
He saw the golden alchemy of a chosen race;
saw greed transmitted to progress; saw that
which had enslaved men, work at last to their
liberation; heard the roar of mighty mills,
and on the streets all the peoples of earth
walking with common purpose, in fealty and
understanding. And then, from the swelling
of this concourse of great sounds, came a
diminuendo, calm as philosophy, and from
that, nothingness.

Boyce sat still for a long time, listening to
the echoes which this music had awakened
in his soul. He retired, at length, content,
but determined that upon the morrow he
would watch -- the day being Sunday -- for
the musician who had so moved and taught
him.

He arose early, therefore, and having pre-
pared his own simple breakfast of fruit and
coffee, took his station by the window to
watch for the man. For he felt convinced
that the exposition he had heard was that of
a masculine mind. The long, hot hours of
the morning went by, but the front door
of the house next to his did not open.

"These artists sleep late," he complained.
Still he watched. He was too much afraid
of losing him to go out for dinner. By three
in the afternoon he had grown impatient. He
went to the house next door and rang the
bell.   There was no response.   He thun-
dered another appeal.  An old woman with
a cloth about her head answered the door.
She was very deaf, and Boyce had difficulty
in making himself understood.

"The family is in the country," was all she
would say. "The family will not be home
till September."

"But there is some one living here?"
shouted Boyce.

"_I_ live here," she said with dignity, put-
ting back a wisp of dirty gray hair behind
her ear. "It is my house. I sublet to the
family."

"What family?"

But the old creature was not communica-
tive.

"The family that lives here," she said.

"Then who plays the piano in this house?"
roared Boyce. "Do you?"

He thought a shade of pallor showed itself
on her ash-colored cheeks. Yet she smiled a
little at the idea of her playing.

"There is no piano," she said, and she put
an enigmatical emphasis to the words.

"Nonsense," cried Boyce, indignantly. "I
heard a piano being played in this very house
for hours last night!"

"You may enter," said the old woman,
with an accent more vicious than hospitable.

Boyce almost burst into the drawing-room.
It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly
furniture and gaudy walls. No piano nor any
other musical instrument stood in it. The
intruder turned an angry and baffled face to
the old woman, who was smiling with ill-
concealed exultation.

"I shall see the other rooms," he an-
nounced. The old woman did not appear to
be surprised at his impertinence.

"As you please," she said.

So, with the hobbling creature, with her
bandaged head, for a guide, he explored every
room of the house, which being identical with
his own, he could do without fear of leaving
any apartment unentered. But no piano did
he find!

"Explain," roared Boyce at length, turning
upon the leering old hag beside him. "Ex-
plain! For surely I heard music more beau-
tiful than I can tell."

"I know nothing," she said. "But it is
true I once had a lodger who rented the
front room, and that he played upon the
piano. I am poor at hearing, but he must
have played well, for all the neighbors used
to come in front of the house to listen, and
sometimes they applauded him, and some-
times they were still.   I could tell by
watching their hands. Sometimes little chil-
dren came and danced. Other times young
men and women came and listened. But the
young man died. The neighbors were angry.
They came to look at him and said he had
starved to death.  It was no fault of mine.
I sold his piano to pay his funeral ex-
penses -- and it took every cent to pay for
them too, I'd have you know.   But since
then, sometimes -- still, it must be non-
sense, for I never heard it -- folks say that he
plays the piano in my room. It has kept me
out of the letting of it more than once. But
the family doesn't seem to mind -- the family
that lives here, you know. They will be back
in September. Yes."

Boyce left her nodding her thanks at what
he had placed in her hand, and went home to
write it all to Babette -- Babette who would
laugh so merrily when she read it!




AN ASTRAL ONION


WHEN Tig Braddock came to Nora
Finnegan he was red-headed and
freckled, and, truth to tell, he re-
mained with these features to the
end of his life -- a life prolonged by a lucky,
if somewhat improbable, incident, as you shall
hear.

Tig had shuffled off his parents as saurians,
of some sorts, do their skins. During the
temporary absence from home of his mother,
who was at the bridewell, and the more ex-
tended vacation of his father, who, like Vil-
lon, loved the open road and the life of it,
Tig, who was not a well-domesticated animal,
wandered away. The humane society never
heard of him, the neighbors did not miss
him, and the law took no cognizance of this
detached citizen -- this lost pleiad.   Tig
would have sunk into that melancholy which
is attendant upon hunger, -- the only form of
despair which babyhood knows, -- if he had
not wandered across the path of Nora Finne-
gan. Now Nora shone with steady brightness
in her orbit, and no sooner had Tig entered
her atmosphere, than he was warmed and com-
forted.  Hunger could not live where Nora
was.   The basement room where she kept
house was redolent with savory smells; and
in the stove in her front room -- which was
also her bedroom -- there was a bright fire
glowing when fire was needed.

Nora went out washing for a living. But
she was not a poor washerwoman. Not at all.
She was a washerwoman triumphant. She
had perfect health, an enormous frame, an
abounding enthusiasm for life, and a rich
abundance of professional pride.  She be-
lieved herself to be the best washer of white
clothes she had ever had the pleasure of
knowing, and the value placed upon her ser-
vices, and her long connection with certain
families with large weekly washings, bore out
this estimate of herself -- an estimate which
she never endeavored to conceal.

Nora had buried two husbands without being
unduly depressed by the fact. The first hus-
band had been a disappointment, and Nora
winked at Providence when an accident in a
tunnel carried him off -- that is to say, carried
the husband off. The second husband was
not so much of a disappointment as a sur-
prise.   He developed ability of a literary
order, and wrote songs which sold and made
him a small fortune. Then he ran away with
another woman. The woman spent his fort-
une, drove him to dissipation, and when he
was dying he came back to Nora, who re-
ceived him cordially, attended him to the
end, and cheered his last hours by singing
his own songs to him. Then she raised a
headstone recounting his virtues, which were
quite numerous, and refraining from any
reference to those peculiarities which had
caused him to be such a surprise.

Only one actual chagrin had ever nibbled
at the sound heart of Nora Finnegan -- a
cruel chagrin, with long, white teeth, such
as rodents have! She had never held a child
to her breast, nor laughed in its eyes; never
bathed the pink form of a little son or
daughter; never felt a tugging of tiny hands
at her voluminous calico skirts! Nora had
burnt many candles before the statue of the
blessed Virgin without remedying this deplor-
able condition. She had sent up unavailing
prayers -- she had, at times, wept hot tears of
longing and loneliness.   Sometimes in her
sleep she dreamed that a wee form, warm and
exquisitely soft, was pressed against her firm
body, and that a hand with tiniest pink nails
crept within her bosom. But as she reached
out to snatch this delicious little creature
closer, she woke to realize a barren woman's
grief, and turned herself in anguish on her
lonely pillow.

So when Tig came along, accompanied by
two curs, who had faithfully followed him
from his home, and when she learned the
details of his story, she took him in, curs
and all, and, having bathed the three of
them, made them part and parcel of her
home. This was after the demise of the
second husband, and at a time when Nora
felt that she had done all a woman could be
expected to do for Hymen.

Tig was a preposterous baby. The curs
were preposterous curs.   Nora had always
been afflicted with a surplus amount of
laughter -- laughter which had difficulty in
attaching itself to anything, owing to the
lack of the really comic in the surroundings
of the poor. But with a red-headed and
freckled baby boy and two trick dogs in the
house, she found a good and sufficient excuse
for her hilarity, and would have torn the
cave where echo lies with her mirth, had that
cave not been at such an immeasurable dis-
tance from the crowded neighborhood where
she lived.

At the age of four Tig went to free kinder-
garten; at the age of six he was in school,
and made three grades the first year and two
the next. At fifteen he was graduated from
the high school and went to work as errand
boy in a newspaper office, with the fixed de-
termination to make a journalist of himself.

Nora was a trifle worried about his morals
when she discovered his intellect, but as time
went on, and Tig showed no devotion for any
woman save herself, and no consciousness
that there were such things as bad boys or
saloons in the world, she began to have con-
fidence. All of his earnings were brought to
her. Every holiday was spent with her. He
told her his secrets and his aspirations. He
admitted that he expected to become a great
man, and, though he had not quite decided
upon the nature of his career, -- saving, of
course, the makeshift of journalism, -- it
was not unlikely that he would elect to be a
novelist like -- well, probably like Thackeray.

Hope, always a charming creature, put on
her most alluring smiles for Tig, and he
made her his mistress, and feasted on the
light of her eyes. Moreover, he was chap-
eroned, so to speak, by Nora Finnegan, who
listened to every line Tig wrote, and made a
mighty applause, and filled him up with good
Irish stew, many colored as the coat of Joseph,
and pungent with the inimitable perfume of
"the rose of the cellar." Nora Finnegan
understood the onion, and used it lovingly.
She perceived the difference between the use
and abuse of this pleasant and obvious friend
of hungry man, and employed it with enthu-
siasm, but discretion. Thus it came about
that whoever ate of her dinners, found the
meals of other cooks strangely lacking in
savor, and remembered with regret the soups
and stews, the broiled steaks, and stuffed
chickens of the woman who appreciated the
onion.

When Nora Finnegan came home with a
cold one day, she took it in such a jocular
fashion that Tig felt not the least concern
about her, and when, two days later, she died
of pneumonia, he almost thought, at first,
that it must be one of her jokes. She had
departed with decision, such as had charac-
terized every act of her life, and had made as
little trouble for others as possible.  When
she was dead the community had the oppor-
tunity of discovering the number of her
friends.    Miserable children with faces
which revealed two generations of hunger,
homeless boys with vicious countenances,
miserable wrecks of humanity, women with
bloated faces, came to weep over Nora's bier,
and to lay a flower there, and to scuttle away,
more abjectly lonely than even sin could make
them. If the cats and the dogs, the sparrows
and horses to which she had shown kindness,
could also have attended her funeral, the
procession would have been, from a point of
numbers, one of the most imposing the city
had ever known. Tig used up all their sav-
ings to bury her, and the next week, by some
peculiar fatality, he had a falling out with the
night editor of his paper, and was discharged.
This sank deep into his sensitive soul, and
he swore he would be an underling no longer
-- which foolish resolution was directly trace-
able to his hair, the color of which, it will be
recollected, was red.

Not being an underling, he was obliged to
make himself into something else, and he
recurred passionately to his old idea of be-
coming a novelist.   He settled down in
Nora's basement rooms, went to work on a
battered type-writer, did his own cooking,
and occasionally pawned something to keep
him in food.  The environment was calcu-
lated to further impress him with the idea of
his genius.

A certain magazine offered an alluring prize
for a short story, and Tig wrote one, and
rewrote it, making alterations, revisions, an-
notations, and interlineations which would
have reflected credit upon Honor&eacute; Balzac
himself. Then he wrought all together, with
splendid brevity and dramatic force, -- Tig's
own words, -- and mailed the same. He was
convinced he would get the prize. He was
just as much convinced of it as Nora Finne-
gan would have been if she had been with
him.

So he went about doing more fiction, tak-
ing no especial care of himself, and wrapt in
rosy dreams, which, not being warm enough
for the weather, permitted him to come down
with rheumatic fever.

He lay alone in his room and suffered such
torments as the condemned and rheumatic
know, depending on one of Nora's former
friends to come in twice a day and keep up
the fire for him. This friend was aged ten,
and looked like a sparrow who had been in
a cyclone, but somewhere inside his bones
was a wit which had spelled out devotion.
He found fuel for the cracked stove, some-
how or other. He brought it in a dirty sack
which he carried on his back, and he kept
warmth in Tig's miserable body. Moreover,
he found food of a sort -- cold, horrible bits
often, and Tig wept when he saw them,
remembering the meals Nora had served
him.

Tig was getting better, though he was con-
scious of a weak heart and a lamenting
stomach, when, to his amazement, the Spar-
row ceased to visit him. Not for a moment
did Tig suspect desertion. He knew that
only something in the nature of an act of
Providence, as the insurance companies would
designate it, could keep the little bundle of
bones away from him. As the days went by,
he became convinced of it, for no Sparrow
came, and no coal lay upon the hearth. The
basement window fortunately looked toward
the south, and the pale April sunshine was
beginning to make itself felt, so that the tem-
perature of the room was not unbearable. But
Tig languished; sank, sank, day by day, and
was kept alive only by the conviction that the
letter announcing the award of the thousand-
dollar prize would presently come to him.
One night he reached a place, where, for
hunger and dejection, his mind wandered,
and he seemed to be complaining all night
to Nora of his woes. When the chill dawn
came, with chittering of little birds on the
dirty pavement, and an agitation of the
scrawny willow "pussies," he was not able
to lift his hand to his head. The window
before his sight was but "a glimmering
square." He said to himself that the end
must be at hand. Yet it was cruel, cruel,
with fame and fortune so near! If only he
had some food, he might summon strength to
rally -- just for a little while! Impossible that
he should die! And yet without food there
was no choice.

Dreaming so of Nora's dinners, thinking
how one spoonful of a stew such as she often
compounded would now be his salvation, he
became conscious of the presence of a strong
perfume in the room. It was so familiar that
it seemed like a sub-consciousness, yet he
found no name for this friendly odor for a
bewildered minute or two. Little by little,
however, it grew upon him, that it was the
onion -- that fragrant and kindly bulb which
had attained its apotheosis in the cuisine of
Nora Finnegan of sacred memory. He opened
his languid eyes, to see if, mayhap, the plant
had not attained some more palpable mate-
rialization.

Behold, it was so! Before him, in a brown
earthen dish, -- a most familiar dish, -- was an
onion, pearly white, in placid seas of gravy,
smoking and delectable. With unexpected
strength he raised himself, and reached for
the dish, which floated before him in a halo
made by its own steam. It moved toward
him, offered a spoon to his hand, and as he
ate he heard about the room the rustle of
Nora Finnegan's starched skirts, and now and
then a faint, faint echo of her old-time laugh
-- such an echo as one may find of the sea in
the heart of a shell.

The noble bulb disappeared little by little
before his voracity, and in  contentment
greater than virtue can give, he sank back
upon his pillow and slept.

Two hours later the postman knocked at the
door, and receiving no answer, forced his
way in. Tig, half awake, saw him enter with
no surprise. He felt no surprise when he put
a letter in his hand bearing the name of the
magazine to which he had sent his short story.
He was not even surprised, when, tearing it
open with suddenly alert hands, he found
within the check for the first prize -- the
check he had expected.

All that day, as the April sunlight spread
itself upon his floor, he felt his strength grow.
Late in the afternoon the Sparrow came back,
paler, and more bony than ever, and sank,
breathing hard, upon the floor, with his sack
of coal.

"I've been sick," he said, trying to smile.
"Terrible sick, but I come as soon as I could."

"Build up the fire," cried Tig, in a voice
so strong it made the Sparrow start as if a
stone had struck him. "Build up the fire,
and forget you are sick. For, by the shade of
Nora Finnegan, you shall be hungry no more!"





FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD


WHEN Urda Bjarnason tells a tale all
the men stop their talking to lis-
ten, for they know her to be wise
with the wisdom of the old people,
and that she has more learning than can be
got even from the great schools at Reykjavik.
She is especially prized by them here in this
new country where the Icelandmen are settled
-- this America, so new in letters, where the
people speak foolishly and write unthinking
books. So the men who know that it is given
to the mothers of earth to be very wise, stop
their six part singing, or their jangles about
the free-thinkers, and give attentive ear when
Urda Bjarnason lights her pipe and begins her
tale.

She is very old. Her daughters and sons
are all dead, but her granddaughter, who is
most respectable, and the cousin of a phy-
sician, says that Urda is twenty-four and a
hundred, and there are others who say that
she is older still. She watches all that the
Iceland people do in the new land; she knows
about the building of the five villages on the
North Dakota plain, and of the founding of
the churches and the schools, and the tilling
of the wheat farms. She notes with sus-
picion the actions of the women who bring
home webs of cloth from the store, instead of
spinning them as their mothers did before
them; and she shakes her head at the wives
who run to the village grocery store every
fortnight, imitating the wasteful American
women, who throw butter in the fire faster
than it can be turned from the churn.

She watches yet other things. All winter
long the white snows reach across the gently
rolling plains as far as the eye can behold.
In the morning she sees them tinted pink at
the east; at noon she notes golden lights
flashing across them; when the sky is gray --
which is not often -- she notes that they grow
as ashen as a face with the death shadow on it.
Sometimes they glitter with silver-like tips of
ocean waves. But at these things she looks
only casually. It is when the blue shadows
dance on the snow that she leaves her corner
behind the iron stove, and stands before the
window, resting her two hands on the stout
bar of her cane, and gazing out across the
waste with eyes which age has restored after
four decades of decrepitude.

The young Icelandmen say:

"Mother, it is the clouds hurrying across
the sky that make the dance of the shadows."

"There are no clouds," she replies, and
points to the jewel-like blue of the arching
sky.

"It is the drifting air," explains Fridrik
Halldersson, he who has been in the North-
ern seas. "As the wind buffets the air, it
looks blue against the white of the snow.
'Tis the air that makes the dancing shadows."

But Urda shakes her head, and points with
her dried finger, and those who stand beside
her see figures moving, and airy shapes, and
contortions of strange things, such as are seen
in a beryl stone.

"But Urda Bjarnason," says Ingeborg Chris-
tianson, the pert young wife with the blue-
eyed twins, "why is it we see these things
only when we stand beside you and you help
us to the sight?"

"Because," says the mother, with a steel-
blue flash of her old eyes, "having eyes ye
will not see!" Then the men laugh. They
like to hear Ingeborg worsted. For did she
not jilt two men from Gardar, and one from
Mountain, and another from Winnipeg?

Not even Ingeborg can deny that Mother
Urda tells true things.

"To-day," says Urda, standing by the little
window and watching the dance of the shadows,
"a child breathed thrice on a farm at the
West, and then it died."

The next week at the church gathering,
when all the sledges stopped at the house of
Urda's granddaughter, they said it was so --
that John Christianson's wife Margaret never
heard the voice of her son, but that he
breathed thrice in his nurse's arms and died.

"Three sledges run over the snow toward
Milton," says Urda; "all are laden with wheat,
and in one is a stranger. He has with him
a strange engine, but its purpose I do not
know."

Six hours later the drivers of three empty
sledges stop at the house.

"We have been to Milton with wheat," they
say, "and Christian Johnson here, carried a
photographer from St. Paul."

Now it stands to reason that the farmers
like to amuse themselves through the silent
and white winters. And they prefer above all
things to talk or to listen, as has been the
fashion of their race for a thousand years.
Among all the story-tellers there is none like
Urda, for she is the daughter and the grand-
daughter and the great-granddaughter of story-
tellers. It is given to her to talk, as it is
given to John Thorlaksson to sing -- he who
sings so as his sledge flies over the snow at
night, that the people come out in the bitter
air from their doors to listen, and the dogs
put up their noses and howl, not liking music.

In the little cabin of Peter Christianson, the
husband of Urda's granddaughter, it some-
times happens that twenty men will gather
about the stove.   They hang their bear-skin
coats on the wall, put their fur gauntlets
underneath the stove, where they will keep
warm, and then stretch their stout, felt-covered
legs to the wood fire.   The room is fetid;
the coffee steams eternally on the stove; and
from her chair in the warmest corner Urda
speaks out to the listening men, who shake
their heads with joy as they hear the pure old
Icelandic flow in sweet rhythm from between
her lips. Among the many, many tales she
tells is that of the dead weaver, and she tells
it in the simplest language in all the world --
language so simple that even great scholars
could find no simpler, and the children
crawling on the floor can understand.

"Jon and Loa lived with their father and
mother far to the north of the Island of Fire,
and when the children looked from their win-
dows they saw only wild scaurs and jagged
lava rocks, and a distant, deep gleam of the
sea. They caught the shine of the sea through
an eye-shaped opening in the rocks, and all
the long night of winter it gleamed up at them,
like the eye of a dead witch. But when it
sparkled and began to laugh, the children
danced about the hut and sang, for they knew
the bright summer time was at hand. Then
their father fished, and their mother was gay.
But it is true that even in the winter and the
darkness they were happy, for they made fish-
ing nets and baskets and cloth together, --
Jon and Loa and their father and mother, --
and the children were taught to read in the
books, and were told the sagas, and given
instruction in the part singing.

"They did not know there was such a thing
as sorrow in the world, for no one had ever
mentioned it to them. But one day their
mother died. Then they had to learn how to
keep the fire on the hearth, and to smoke the
fish, and make the black coffee.   And also
they had to learn how to live when there is
sorrow at the heart.

"They wept together at night for lack of
their mother's kisses, and in the morning they
were loath to rise because they could not see
her face. The dead cold eye of the sea
watching them from among the lava rocks
made them afraid, so they hung a shawl over
the window to keep it out. And the house,
try as they would, did not look clean and
cheerful as it had used to do when their
mother sang and worked about it.

"One day, when a mist rested over the eye
of the sea, like that which one beholds on
the eyes of the blind, a greater sorrow came
to them, for a stepmother crossed the thres-
hold. She looked at Jon and Loa, and made
complaint to their father that they were still
very small and not likely to be of much use.
After that they had to rise earlier than ever,
and to work as only those who have their
growth should work, till their hearts cracked
for weariness and shame.   They had not
much to eat, for their stepmother said she
would trust to the gratitude of no other
woman's child, and that she believed in lay-
ing up against old age. So she put the few
coins that came to the house in a strong box,
and bought little food. Neither did she buy
the children clothes, though those which their
dear mother had made for them were so worn
that the warp stood apart from the woof, and
there were holes at the elbows and little
warmth to be found in them anywhere.

"Moreover, the quilts on their beds were
too short for their growing length, so that
at night either their purple feet or their
thin shoulders were uncovered, and they
wept for the cold, and in the morning, when
they crept into the larger room to build
the fire, they were so stiff they could not
stand straight, and there was pain at their
joints.

"The wife scolded all the time, and her
brow was like a storm sweeping down from
the Northwest. There was no peace to be
had in the house. The children might not
repeat to each other the sagas their mother
had taught them, nor try their part singing,
nor make little doll cradles of rushes. Always
they had to work, always they were scolded,
always their clothes grew thinner.

"'Stepmother,' cried Loa one day, -- she
whom her mother had called the little bird,
-- 'we are a-cold because of our rags. Our
mother would have woven blue cloth for us
and made it into garments.'

"'Your mother is where she will weave no
cloth!' said the stepmother, and she laughed
many times.

"All in the cold and still of that night, the
stepmother wakened, and she knew not why.
She sat up in her bed, and knew not why.
She knew not why, and she looked into the
room, and there, by the light of a burning
fish's tail -- 'twas such a light the folk used in
those days -- was a woman, weaving. She had
no loom, and shuttle she had none. All with
her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stoop-
ing and bending, rising and swaying with
motions beautiful as those the Northern
Lights make in a midwinter sky, she wove a
cloth. The warp was blue and mystical to
see, the woof was white, and shone with its
whiteness, so that of all the webs the step-
mother had ever seen, she had seen none like
to this.

"Yet the sight delighted her not, for beyond
the drifting web, and beyond the weaver she
saw the room and furniture -- aye, saw them
through the body of the weaver and the drift-
ing of the cloth. Then she knew -- as the
haunted are made to know -- that 'twas the
mother of the children come to show her she
could still weave cloth.   The heart of the
stepmother was cold as ice, yet she could not
move to waken her husband at her side, for
her hands were as fixed as if they were
crossed on her dead breast. The voice in her
was silent, and her tongue stood to the roof
of her mouth.

"After a time the wraith of the dead
mother moved toward her -- the wraith of the
weaver moved her way -- and round and about
her body was wound the shining cloth.
Wherever it touched the body of the step-
mother, it was as hateful to her as the touch
of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her flesh
crept away from it, and her senses swooned.

"In the early morning she awoke to the
voices of the children, whispering in the
inner room as they dressed with half-frozen
fingers. Still about her was the hateful, beau-
tiful web, filling her soul with loathing and
with fear. She thought she saw the task set
for her, and when the children crept in to
light the fire -- very purple and thin were
their little bodies, and the rags hung from
them -- she arose and held out the shining
cloth, and cried:

"'Here is the web your mother wove for
you. I will make it into garments!' But
even as she spoke the cloth faded and fell
into nothingness, and the children cried:

"'Stepmother, you have the fever!'

"And then:

"'Stepmother, what makes the strange light
in the room?'

"That day the stepmother was too weak to
rise from her bed, and the children thought
she must be going to die, for she did not
scold as they cleared the house and braided
their baskets, and she did not frown at them,
but looked at them with wistful eyes.

"By fall of night she was as weary as if she
had wept all the day, and so she slept. But
again she was awakened and knew not why.
And again she sat up in her bed and knew
not why. And again, not knowing why, she
looked and saw a woman weaving cloth. All
that had happened the night before happened
this night. Then, when the morning came,
and the children crept in shivering from their
beds, she arose and dressed herself, and from
her strong box she took coins, and bade her
husband go with her to the town.

"So that night a web of cloth, woven by
one of the best weavers in all Iceland, was in
the house; and on the beds of the children
were blankets of lamb's wool, soft to the touch
and fair to the eye. After that the children
slept warm and were at peace; for now, when
they told the sagas their mother had taught
them, or tried their part songs as they sat
together on their bench, the stepmother was
silent.   For she feared to chide, lest she
should wake at night, not knowing why, and
see the mother's wraith."




A GRAMMATICAL GHOST


THERE was only one possible ob-
jection to the drawing-room, and
that was the occasional presence
of Miss Carew; and only one pos-
sible objection to Miss Carew. And that was,
that she was dead.

She had been dead twenty years, as a matter
of fact and record, and to the last of her life
sacredly preserved the treasures and traditions
of her family, a family bound up -- as it is
quite unnecessary to explain to any one in
good society -- with all that is most venerable
and heroic in the history of the Republic.
Miss Carew never relaxed the proverbial hos-
pitality of her house, even when she remained
its sole representative.   She continued to
preside at her table with dignity and state,
and to set an example of excessive modesty
and gentle decorum to a generation of restless
young women.

It is not likely that having lived a life of
such irreproachable gentility as this, Miss
Carew would have the bad taste to die in any
way not pleasant to mention in fastidious
society. She could be trusted to the last, not
to outrage those friends who quoted her as
an exemplar of propriety. She died very un-
obtrusively of an affection of the heart, one
June morning, while trimming her rose trellis,
and her lavender-colored print was not even
rumpled when she fell, nor were more than
the tips of her little bronze slippers visible.

"Isn't it dreadful," said the Philadelphians,
"that the property should go to a very, very
distant cousin in Iowa or somewhere else on
the frontier, about whom nobody knows any-
thing at all?"

The Carew treasures were packed in boxes
and sent away into the Iowa wilderness; the
Carew traditions were preserved by the His-
torical Society; the Carew property, standing
in one of the most umbrageous and aristo-
cratic suburbs of Philadelphia, was rented to
all manner of folk -- anybody who had money
enough to pay the rental -- and society entered
its doors no more.

But at last, after twenty years, and when all
save the oldest Philadelphians had forgotten
Miss Lydia Carew, the very, very distant
cousin appeared. He was quite in the prime
of life, and so agreeable and unassuming that
nothing could be urged against him save his
patronymic, which, being Boggs, did not
commend itself to the euphemists. With him
were two maiden sisters, ladies of excellent
taste and manners, who restored the Carew
china to its ancient cabinets, and replaced
the Carew pictures upon the walls, with ad-
ditions not out of keeping with the elegance
of these heirlooms.  Society, with a magna-
nimity almost dramatic, overlooked the name
of Boggs -- and called.

All was well. At least, to an outsider all
seemed to be well. But, in truth, there was
a certain distress in the old mansion, and in
the hearts of the well-behaved Misses Boggs.
It came about most unexpectedly. The sis-
ters had been sitting upstairs, looking out at
the beautiful grounds of the old place, and
marvelling at the violets, which lifted their
heads from every possible cranny about the
house, and talking over the cordiality which
they had been receiving by those upon whom
they had no claim, and they were filled with
amiable satisfaction. Life looked attractive.
They had often been grateful to Miss Lydia
Carew for leaving their brother her fortune.
Now they felt even more grateful to her. She
had left them a Social Position -- one, which
even after twenty years of desuetude, was fit
for use.

They descended the stairs together, with
arms clasped about each other's waists, and as
they did so presented a placid and pleasing
sight. They entered their drawing-room with
the intention of brewing a cup of tea, and
drinking it in calm sociability in the twilight.
But as they entered the room they became
aware of the presence of a lady, who was
already seated at their tea-table, regarding
their old Wedgewood with the air of a con-
noisseur.

There were a number of peculiarities about
this intruder. To begin with, she was hatless,
quite as if she were a habitu&eacute; of the house,
and was costumed in a prim lilac-colored
lawn of the style of two decades past. But
a greater peculiarity was the resemblance
this lady bore to a faded daguerrotype. If
looked at one way, she was perfectly discern-
ible; if looked at another, she went out in a
sort of blur.  Notwithstanding this compara-
tive invisibility, she exhaled a delicate per-
fume of sweet lavender, very pleasing to the
nostrils of the Misses Boggs, who stood look-
ing at her in gentle and unprotesting surprise.

"I beg your pardon," began Miss Pru-
dence, the younger of the Misses Boggs, 
"but --"

But at this moment the Daguerrotype be-
came a blur, and Miss Prudence found her-
self addressing space.   The Misses Boggs
were irritated. They had never encountered
any mysteries in Iowa. They began an im-
patient search behind doors and porti&egrave;res,
and even under sofas, though it was quite
absurd to suppose that a lady recognizing
the merits of the Carew Wedgewood would
so far forget herself as to crawl under a
sofa.

When they had given up all hope of dis-
covering the intruder, they saw her standing
at the far end of the drawing-room critically
examining a water-color marine. The elder
Miss Boggs started toward her with stern
decision, but the little Daguerrotype turned
with a shadowy smile, became a blur and an
imperceptibility.

Miss Boggs looked at Miss Prudence Boggs.

"If there were ghosts," she said, "this
would be one."

"If there were ghosts," said Miss Prudence
Boggs, "this would be the ghost of Lydia
Carew."

The twilight was settling into blackness, and
Miss Boggs nervously lit the gas while Miss
Prudence ran for other tea-cups, preferring,
for reasons superfluous to mention, not to
drink out of the Carew china that evening.

The next day, on taking up her embroidery
frame, Miss Boggs found a number of old-
fashioned cross-stitches added to her Ken-
sington.  Prudence, she knew, would never
have degraded herself by taking a cross-stitch,
and the parlor-maid was above taking such a
liberty. Miss Boggs mentioned the incident
that night at a dinner given by an ancient
friend of the Carews.

"Oh, that's the work of Lydia Carew, with-
out a doubt!" cried the hostess. "She visits
every new family that moves to the house, but
she never remains more than a week or two
with any one."

"It must be that she disapproves of them,"
suggested Miss Boggs.

"I think that's it," said the hostess. "She
doesn't like their china, or their fiction."

"I hope she'll disapprove of us," added
Miss Prudence.

The hostess belonged to a very old Philadel-
phian family, and she shook her head.

"I should say it was a compliment for even
the ghost of Miss Lydia Carew to approve of
one," she said severely.

The next morning, when the sisters entered
their drawing-room there were numerous evi-
dences of an occupant during their absence.
The sofa pillows had been rearranged so that
the effect of their grouping was less bizarre
than that favored by the Western women; a
horrid little Buddhist idol with its eyes fixed
on its abdomen, had been chastely hidden
behind a Dresden shepherdess, as unfit for
the scrutiny of polite eyes; and on the table
where Miss Prudence did work in water colors,
after the fashion of the impressionists, lay a
prim and impossible composition representing
a moss-rose and a number of heartsease, col-
ored with that caution which modest spinster
artists instinctively exercise.

"Oh, there's no doubt it's the work of Miss
Lydia Carew," said Miss Prudence, contemptu-
ously. "There's no mistaking the drawing of
that rigid little rose. Don't you remember
those wreaths and bouquets framed, among the
pictures we got when the Carew pictures were
sent to us? I gave some of them to an orphan
asylum and burned up the rest."

"Hush!" cried Miss Boggs, involuntarily.
"If she heard you, it would hurt her feelings
terribly.   Of course, I mean --" and she
blushed.   "It might hurt her feelings --
but how perfectly ridiculous!   It's impos-
sible!"

Miss Prudence held up the sketch of the
moss-rose.

"THAT may be impossible in an artistic
sense, but it is a palpable thing."

"Bosh!" cried Miss Boggs.

"But," protested Miss Prudence, "how do
you explain it?"

"I don't," said Miss Boggs, and left the
room.

That evening the sisters made a point of
being in the drawing-room before the dusk
came on, and of lighting the gas at the first
hint of twilight. They didn't believe in Miss
Lydia Carew -- but still they meant to be
beforehand with her. They talked with un-
wonted vivacity and in a louder tone than was
their custom. But as they drank their tea
even their utmost verbosity could not make
them oblivious to the fact that the perfume of
sweet lavender was stealing insidiously through
the room. They tacitly refused to recognize
this odor and all that it indicated, when sud-
denly, with a sharp crash, one of the old
Carew tea-cups fell from the tea-table to the
floor and was broken. The disaster was fol-
lowed by what sounded like a sigh of pain and
dismay.

"I didn't suppose Miss Lydia Carew would
ever be as awkward as that," cried the younger
Miss Boggs, petulantly.

"Prudence," said her sister with a stern
accent, "please try not to be a fool.  You
brushed the cup off with the sleeve of your
dress."

"Your theory wouldn't be so bad," said Miss
Prudence, half laughing and half crying, "if
there were any sleeves to my dress, but, as you
see, there aren't," and then Miss Prudence
had something as near hysterics as a healthy
young woman from the West can have.

"I wouldn't think such a perfect lady as
Lydia Carew," she ejaculated between her
sobs, "would make herself so disagreeable!
You may talk about good-breeding all you
please, but I call such intrusion exceedingly
bad taste. I have a horrible idea that she
likes us and means to stay with us. She left
those other people because she did not approve
of their habits or their grammar. It would be
just our luck to please her."

"Well, I like your egotism," said Miss
Boggs.

However, the view Miss Prudence took of
the case appeared to be the right one. Time
went by and Miss Lydia Carew still remained.
When the ladies entered their drawing-room
they would see the little lady-like Daguerro-
type revolving itself into a blur before one of
the family portraits. Or they noticed that
the yellow sofa cushion, toward which she
appeared to feel a peculiar antipathy, had
been dropped behind the sofa upon the floor,
or that one of Jane Austen's novels, which
none of the family ever read, had been re-
moved from the book shelves and left open
upon the table.

"I cannot become reconciled to it," com-
plained Miss Boggs to Miss Prudence. "I
wish we had remained in Iowa where we
belong. Of course I don't believe in the
thing! No sensible person would. But still
I cannot become reconciled."

But their liberation was to come, and in a
most unexpected manner.

A relative by marriage visited them from
the West. He was a friendly man and had
much to say, so he talked all through dinner,
and afterward followed the ladies to the draw-
ing-room to finish his gossip. The gas in the
room was turned very low, and as they entered
Miss Prudence caught sight of Miss Carew, in
company attire, sitting in upright propriety
in a stiff-backed chair at the extremity of the
apartment.

Miss Prudence had a sudden idea.

"We will not turn up the gas," she said,
with an emphasis intended to convey private
information to her sister. "It will be more
agreeable to sit here and talk in this soft
light."

Neither her brother nor the man from the
West made any objection. Miss Boggs and
Miss Prudence, clasping each other's hands,
divided their attention between their corporeal
and their incorporeal guests. Miss Boggs was
confident that her sister had an idea, and was
willing to await its development. As the guest
from Iowa spoke, Miss Carew bent a politely
attentive ear to what he said.

"Ever since Richards took sick that time,"
he said briskly, "it seemed like he shed all
responsibility."  (The Misses Boggs saw the
Daguerrotype put up her shadowy head with
a movement of doubt and apprehension.)
"The fact of the matter was, Richards didn't
seem to scarcely get on the way he might have
been expected to." (At this conscienceless
split to the infinitive and misplacing of the
preposition, Miss Carew arose trembling per-
ceptibly.) "I saw it wasn't no use for him to
count on a quick recovery --"

The Misses Boggs lost the rest of the sen-
tence, for at the utterance of the double nega-
tive Miss Lydia Carew had flashed out, not in
a blur, but with mortal haste, as when life
goes out at a pistol shot!

The man from the West wondered why Miss
Prudence should have cried at so pathetic a
part of his story:

"Thank Goodness!"

And their brother was amazed to see Miss Boggs 
kiss Miss Prudence with passion and energy.

It was the end. Miss Carew returned no more.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shape of Fear, by Elia W. Peattie

