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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shape of Fear, by Elia W. Peattie
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+The Shape of Fear
+
+by Elia W. Peattie
+
+September, 1999  [Etext #1876]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shape of Fear, by Elia W. Peattie
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+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
+