and the companions of his periodical breaks with routine living, scarce a visitor sought him from year's end to year's end. Never before had a man of his own age, of experience and education to take with him a glance into the terrible deeps that opened at times as if to gulf him,. come to him, and in this lone visit he had done what? Carried on with him a half-angry, half-contemptuous disputation that had shown the blackest side of his own nature, and, moreover, he had not even asked him to enter his house. He saw now that his very antagonism had been kindled by knowledge that here was something for which he hungered, and by anger at the weakness that made him long for what had been denied him.

For the once he realised how completely he lived alone and how so much of his life had centred about, and been shaped by, this fact of loneliness. So dominant had the note of self-isolation become as to cover him with an instinct of repulsion when another strove to break through his shell. The social faculty had ceased healthful action and demanded the stimulant of passion or appetite even to give it the semblance of life. Under the whip and spur of these, he plunged recklessly into excess, only to attain again his old quiescence with exhaustion and satiety.

Had it been winter, in the mood of the moment he would have taken himself to the fireside and one of the few volumes which his father had gathered, until they made a library larger than any other in the region. Perhaps he would have selected "Othello" or "Macbeth," volumes the very possession of which was a scandal; or Mather's" Magnalia," replete with fascination for a mind that had dwelt on the dark and fateful mysteries of being. But to-night, not books, but the silence of hills and woods called him to share their loneliness, and,

taking a blanket to wrap about him if it grew chill, he wandered off to the wooded hilltops near Seagrave's sugar-camp, to spend the night, as he had many another, under the stars.

How long he slept he could only guess, but the moon was already low in the west and he saw or fancied a flush in the east. Something had moved above or near him, as if a stir of wings touched the air, and had waked him as sound would have failed to do. He sat upright, but there was no noise abroad; even the wind had fallen silent. It was, nevertheless, as if he felt the wind, so subtle was the sense that he was not alone.

The trees stood as great masses of darkness, between which lay the lesser dark of the night itself. The pines and firs below him offered no breaks, but the boles of the maples were like monster pillars bearing aloft the dome of leaves. The moon dropped below the maple cones and stood at the end of a long aisle between great trunks, flooding the space with a white radiance that was more like a soft mist exhaled from the ground than light from above. In the very centre of this mist stood a figure in shape like a woman, yet seeming rather a mass of denser radiance than the form of an earthborn woman. She was motionless as the great black masses that towered about her.

A chill seized Ashgrave's great limbs and seemed to clutch at his heart. More often, as the "Magnalia" bears testimony, spirits work their will invisibly, but there is also abundant evidence that at times they take form, as in the case of William Morse of Newberry, and that "devil of a little stature, and of a tawny colour" at Salem. All hours of the day and night he had known the woods and hills about Padanaram, but never had he seen such sight as this, the white, misty radiance that

clothed the earth, and born from it this white density in the form of a woman, all enshrined in the motionless silence that encompassed them.

Under the trees the white light of the moon grew dimmer, but the first effect of this was to give firmer outline to the womanly form that had taken shape from the darkness. Then, in turn, it began to fade, until at last his aching eyes could no longer be persuaded to give it shape or outline.

The moon sank below the rim of the earth, the shadows crept up from the ground to meet the massed blackness of the tree-tops, until, save for dimming stars and that faint softness in the east, Ashgrave was in darkness. A faint rustle seemed to pass afar off, as if of wings or the trailing of light garments.

Sharply the numbness of awe which had held Ashgrave broke before the horror of acute fear. Physically, he was no man's coward, but this thing assailed him morally by the avenues of superstition. About him was the unseen; somewhere in the darkness, the unknown, and before these he crouched in terror, which knew no shame. There in the darkness he prayed, as he had never prayed before, appealing to God in the most abject of petitions for mere protection. A sickening horror of fear gripped him, till great beads of sweat broke out on his body and his legs refused to support him when he attempted to rise.

Suddenly there came a soft moaning through the trees, that grew on his affrighted senses till it was like the "mighty rushing wind" at Pentecost. He threw himself on the earth and called on the Lord to hide him. The moaning passed in the distance, and the stillness that followed was as if earth and air had been snatched away, leaving him alone among the eternal silences.

Like a hunted thing, he sprang to his feet and, heedless of bush or rock or tree, rushed downward to where his unseen farm lay in the valley, brushing as he went the night dew from the branches that struck against his face, and startling the sleeping birds and wild fowl from their perches.

At the first sound made by Ashgrave in his flight, a woman, who was standing under the arch of trees at the top of the hill, crouched in the shelter of a great trunk and held her breath in fear. Then as the sound receded, she gathered courage, from that fact as well as from the cover of darkness, and came slowly out into the open under the stars, the soft light of which gave her form against the blackness. She moved slowly to the verge of the hill and, turning her face toward the old farmhouse in the valley, waited. The noise of a man rushing down the hillside grew less and less insistent, steps sounded faintly on the door-yard turf, a door opened and a light blazed sharply forth.

The woman leaned against the trunk of a tree, her arms, crossed upon its rough bark, supporting her head, and burst into sobs, a perfect storm of tears and moanings. When the first tumult had passed, she crept slowly down the hill, crossed the yard and threw herself on the rough door-stone of the house. Here she lay as the light within grew dim and the white dawn stole up the east. Suddenly, at the distant crowing of a cock, she roused herself, made as if she would enter the house, then turned and fled toward the Seagrave farm.

CHAPTER XIII

THIS

AT THE POST OFFICE

HIS is the fourth day runnin' thar 's ben more 'n one letter in this here bag," the postmaster declared, as he emptied the mail-pouch before waiting Padanaram.

"Fust time it's happened in the twelve year I've brung the mail," Blanket asserted, intent on his official share in the marvel.

"Tain't nuther," Singleton contradicted, his natural disposition towards disputation coming to aid his fear of belittling the importance of his office. "You're furgittin' the time when 'Mandy Seagrave war away to school." "I hain't furgittin' nothin', Blanket declared. "Did n't I bring her letter over ev'ry Friday night?"

"Thursday, you mean," corrected the postmaster. "P'raps you know better 'n I du what I mean," Blanket replied, "but I sed 'Friday', an' Friday 't was." ""T was Thursday."

"An' tuk back the answer Monday mornings." "Tuesday," asserted Singleton.

"Ef I remember right, I sed Monday, an' I guess I know, es long 's I hed to carry it. Yer mem'ry hain't what it us'ter be Peleg."

""Tain't, eh? Better look to hum!"

"Ye can't expect at your age, Peleg," Blanket began, only to court brusque interruption:

"Age! I ken remember enyway, when I's to school, hearin' folks say, 'thar goes ol' Tom Blanket'!"