Fortunately no children were born to the couple. But it was one of the most sad, pitiful sights in the world to see Sandy's patient, sad-eyed wife leading him home from the tavern, tottering, reeling, helpless, sodden. Pitiful indeed! Pitiful even from the outside; but if one could only have looked through that outer husk of visible life, and have beheld the inner workings of that lost soul—the struggles, the wrestling with the foul grinning devil that sat astride of him—how much more would that have been pitiful! And then, if one could have seen and have realized as the roots from which arose those inner workings, the hopes, the longings for a better life that filled his heart during the intervals of sobriety, if one could have sensed but one pang of that hell-thirst that foreran the mortal struggle that followed, as that again foreran the inevitable fall into his kennel of lust, and then, last and greatest, if those righteous neighbors of his who never sinned and never fell could only have seen the wakening, the bitter agony of remorse, the groaning horror of self-abasement that ended the debauchery—Ah! that, indeed, was something to pity beyond man's power of pitying.

If Sandy's wife had only berated and abused him, if she had even cried or made a sign of her heart-break, maybe his pangs of remorse might not have been so deadly bitter and cruel; but her steadfast and unrelaxing patience—it was that that damned him more than all else to his hell of remorse.

At last came the end. One day Sandy went to New Harbor City to buy leather for cobbling, and there his devil, for no apparent reason at all, leaped upon him and flung him. For a week he saw or knew nothing but a whirling vision of the world seen through rum-crazy eyes; then at last he awoke to find himself hatless, coatless, filthy, unshaved, blear-eyed, palsied. Not a cent of money was left, and so that day and night, in spite of the deadly nausea that beset him and the trembling weakness that hung like a leaden weight upon every limb, he walked all the thirty-eight miles home again to East Haven. He reached there about five o'clock, and in the still gray of the early dawning. Only a few people were stirring in the streets, and as he slunk along close to the houses, those whom he met turned and looked after him. No one spoke to him or stopped him, as might possibly have been done had he come home at a later hour. Every shred and filament of his poor remorseful heart and soul longed for home and the comfort that his wife alone could give him, and yet at the last corner he stopped for a quaking moment or so in the face of the terror of her unreproachful patience. Then he turned the corner—

Not a sign of his house was to be seen—nothing but an empty, gaping blackness where it had stood before. It had been burned to the ground!

Why is it that God's curse rests very often and most heavily upon the misfortunate? Why is it that He should crush the reeds that are bruised beneath His heel? Why is it that He should seem so often to choose the broken heart to grind to powder?

Sandy's wife had been burned to death in the fire!

From that moment Sandy Graff was lost, utterly and entirely lost. God, for His terrible purposes, had taken away the one last thread that bound the drowning soul to anything of decency and cleanliness. Now his devil and he no longer struggled together; they walked hand in hand. He was without love, without hope, without one iota that might bring a flicker of light into the midnight gloom of his despairing soul.

After the first dreadful blast of his sorrow and despair had burned itself out, he disappeared, no one knew whither. A little over a month passed, and then he suddenly appeared again, drunken, maudlin, tearful. Again he disappeared, again he reappeared, a little deeper sunken, a little more abased, and henceforth that was his life. He became a part of the town, and everybody, from the oldest to the youngest, knew him and his story. He injured no one, he offended no one, and he never failed, somehow or somewhere, to find food to eat, lodging for his head, and clothing to cover his nakedness. He had been among the very first to enter the Refuge, and now, in November, he was the last one left within its walls. He was the only one of the guests who returned, and perhaps he would not have done so had not his aching restlessness driven him back to suffer an echo of agony in the place where his damnation had been inflicted upon him.

Between Colonel Singelsby upon the one side, the wise, the pure, the honored servant of God, and Sandy Graff upon the other side, the vile, the filthy, the ugly, the debased, there yawned a gulf as immeasurably wide and deep as that which gaps between heaven and hell.

IV.

The winter of the year that saw the opening of the East Haven Refuge was one of the most severe that New England had known for generations. It was early in January that there came the great snowstorm that spread its two or three feet of white covering all the way from Maine to Virginia, and East Haven, looking directly in the teeth of the blast that came swirling and raging across the open harbor, felt the full force of the icy tempest. The streets of the town lay a silent desert of drifting whiteness, for no one who could help it was abroad from home that bitter morning.

The hail and snow spat venomously against the windows of Dr. Hunt's office in one of those fine old houses on Bay Street overlooking the harbor. The wind roared sonorously through the naked, tortured branches of the great elm-trees, and the snow piled sharp and smooth in fence corners and around north gables of the house.

Dr. Hunt shuddered as he looked out of the window, for while all his neighbors sat snug and warm around their hearths, he had to face the raging of the icy blast upon the dull routine of his business of mercy—the dull routine of bread-getting by comforting the afflictions of others. Then the sleigh drew up to the gate, the driver already powdered with the gathering whiteness, and Dr. Hunt struggled into his overcoat, tied the ribbons of his fur cap under his chin, and drew on his beaver gloves. Then, with one final shudder, he opened his office door, and stepped out into the drift upon the step.

Instantly he started back with a cry: he had trodden upon a man covered and hidden by the snow.

It was Sandy Graff. How long he had been lying there, no one might tell; a few moments more, and the last flicker of life would have twinkled mercifully out. The doctor had him out of the snow in a moment, and in the next had satisfied himself that Sandy was not dead.

Even as he leaned over the still white figure, feeling the slow faint beating of the failing heart, the doctor was considering whether he should take Sandy into the house or not. The decision was almost instantaneous: it would be most inconvenient, and the Refuge was only a stone's-throw away. So the doctor did not even disturb the household with the news of what had happened. He and the driver wrapped the unconscious figure in a buffalo-robe and laid it in the sleigh.

As the doctor was about to step into the sleigh, some one suddenly laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder. He turned sharply, for he had not heard the approaching footsteps, muffled by the thick snow, and he had been too engrossed with attention to Sandy Graff to notice anything else.

It was young Harold Singelsby; his face was very white and drawn, and in the absorption of his own suppressed agitation he did not even look at Sandy. "Doctor," said he, in a hoarse, constrained voice, "for God's sake, come home with me as quickly as you can: father's very sick!"

* * * * *

I had often wondered how it is with a man when he closes his life to this world. Looking upon the struggling efforts of a dying man to retain his hold upon his body, I had often wondered whether his sliding to unconsciousness was like the dissolving of the mind to sleep in this life.

That death was not like sleep was at such times patent enough—it was patent enough that it was the antithesis of sleep. Sleep is peaceful; death is convulsed—sleep is rest; death is separation.

That which I here following read in the book as it lay open upon the man's knees seemed in a way dark, broken, indistinct with a certain grim obscurity; yet if I read truly therein I distinguished this great difference between death and sleep: Sleep is the cessation of consciousness from an interior life to exterior thought; death is the cessation of consciousness from the exterior mind to an interior life.

* * * * *

When Sandy Graff opened his eyes once more, it was to find himself again within the sheltering arms of the Refuge. That awakening was almost to a full and clear consciousness. It was with no confusion of thought and but little confusion of sight, except for a white mist that seemed to blur the things he saw.

He knew, instantly and vividly, where he was. Instantly and vividly everything found its fit place in his mind—the long rows of cots; the bald, garishly white walls, cold and unbeautiful in their immaculate cleanliness; the range of curtainless windows looking out upon the chill, thin gray of the winter day. He was not surprised to find himself in the Refuge; it did not seem strange to him, and he did not wonder. He dimly remembered stumbling through the snow-drifts and then falling asleep, overpowered by an irresistible and leaden drowsiness. But just where it was he fell, he could not recall.

He saw with dim sight that three or four people were gathered about his bed. Two of them were rubbing his legs and feet, but he could not feel them. It was this senselessness of feeling that first brought the jarring of the truth to him. The house-steward stood near by, and Sandy turned his face weakly toward him. "Mr. Jackson," said he, faintly, "I think I'm going to die."

* * * * *

He turned his face again (now toward the opened window), and was staring unwinkingly at a white square of light, and it seemed to him to grow darker and darker. At first he thought that it was the gathering of night, but faint and flickering as were his senses, there was something beneath his outer self that dreaded it—that dreaded beyond measure the coming of that darkness. After one or two efforts, in which his stiff tongue refused to form the words he desired to speak, he said, at last, "I can't see; it's—getting—dark."

* * * * *

He was dimly, darkly conscious of hurry and bustle around him, of voices calling to send for the doctor, of hurrying hither and thither, but it all seemed faint and distant. Everything was now dark to his sight, and it was as though all this concerned another; but as outer things slipped further and further from him, the more that inner life struggled, tenaciously, dumbly, hopelessly, to retain its grip upon the outer world. Sometimes, now and then, to this inner consciousness, it seemed almost as though it were rising again out of the gathering blackness. But it was only the recurrent vibrations of ebbing powers, for still again, and even before it knew it, that life found itself quickly deeper and more hopelessly in the tremendous shadow into which it was being inexorably engulfed.

He himself knew nothing now of those who stood about the bed, awe-struck and silent, looking down upon him; he himself sensed nothing of the harsh convulsive breathing, and of all the other grim outer signs of the struggle. But still, deep within, that combat of resistance to death waged as desperately, as vividly, as ever.

* * * * *

A door opened, and at the sudden noise the dissolving life recrystallized for one brief instant, and in that instant the dying man knew that Dr. Hunt was standing beside his bed, and heard him say, in a slow, solemn voice, sounding muffled and hollow, as though from far away and through an empty space, "Colonel Singelsby has just died."

Then the cord, momentarily drawn tense, was relaxed with a snap, and the last smoky spark was quenched in blackness.

Dr. Hunt's fingers were resting lightly upon the wrist. As the last deep quivering breath expired with a quavering sigh, he laid the limp hand back upon the bed, and then, before he arose, gently closed the stiff eyelids over the staring glassy eyes, and set the gaping jaws back again into a more seemly repose.

V.

So all this first part of the Parable had, as I read it, a reflected image of what was real and actual; of what belonged to the world of men as I knew that world. The people of whom it spoke moved and lived, maybe not altogether as real men of flesh and blood move and live, but nevertheless with a certain life of their own—images of what was real. All these things, I say (excepting perhaps the last), were clear and plain enough after a certain fashion, but that which followed showed those two of whom the story was written—the good man and the wicked man—stripped of all their outer husk of fleshly reality, and walking and talking not as men of flesh and blood, but as men in the spirit.

So, though I knew that which I was reading might indeed be as true, and perhaps truer, than that other which I had read, and though I knew that to such a state I myself must come, and that as these two suffered, I myself must some time suffer in the same kind, if not in the same degree, nevertheless it was all strangely unreal, and being set apart from that which I knew, was like life as seen in a dream.

Yet let it not be thought that this Parable is all a vague dream, for there are things which are more real than reality, and being so, must be couched in different words from such as describe the things that one's bodily eyes behold of the grim reality of this world. Such things, being so told, may seem as strange and as unsubstantial as that which is unreal, instead of like that which is real.

So that which is now to be read must be read as the other has been read—not as a likeness of life in its inner being, but as an image of that life.

* * * * *

Sandy Graff awoke, and opened his eyes. At first he thought that he was still within the dormitory of the Refuge, for there before him he saw cold, bare white walls immaculately clean. Upon either hand was the row of beds, each with its spotless coverlet, and in front was the long line of curtainless windows looking out upon the bright daylight.

But as his waking senses gathered to a more orderly clearness, he saw very soon that the place in which he was was very different from the Refuge. Even newly awakened, and with his brain clouded and obscured by the fumes of sleep, he distinguished at once that the strange, clear, lucid brilliancy of the light which came in through the row of windows was very different from any light that his eyes had ever before seen. Then, as his mind opened wider and fuller and clearer, and as one by one the objects which surrounded him began to take their proper place in his awakened life, he saw that there were many people around, and that most of the beds were occupied, and in every case by a man. The room in which he lay was somewhat longer than the dormitory of the Refuge, and was connected at the further end with what appeared to be a sort of waiting-room beyond. In and out of the connecting doorway people were coming and going. Some of these seemed to be friends of those who were lying in the beds, being in every case led to some particular bedside, the occupant of which had newly awakened; others, who seemed to be attendants of the place, moved constantly hither and thither, busying themselves around other of the beds, where lay such as seemed to need attention.

Sandy looked slowly around him from left to right. Some of the occupants of the beds—and one of these lay in the cot next to him—were not yet awake, and he saw, with a sort of awe, that each of these lay strangely like a dead man—still, motionless, the face covered with a linen napkin. Two of the attendants seemed to have these sleepers especially in their charge, moving continually hither and thither, to the bedside first of one and then another, evidently to see if there were yet any signs of waking. As Sandy continued watching them, he saw them at last softly and carefully lift a napkin from one of the faces, whereupon the man immediately awoke and sat up.

This occurred in a bed not very far from where he himself lay, and he watched all that passed with a keen and thrilling interest. The man had hardly awakened when word was passed down the length of the room to the antechamber beyond. Apparently some friends of the sleeper were waiting for this word to be brought to them, for there entered directly two women and a man from the further doorway. The three came straight to the bed in which the man lay, and with great noise of rejoicing seemed to welcome the new-comer. They helped him to arise, handed him his clothes piece by piece from the chair at the bedside, and the man began dressing himself.

It was not until then, and until his ear caught some stray words of those that were spoken, that Sandy began to really realize where he was and what had happened to him. Then suddenly a great and awful light broke upon him—he had died and had come to life again—his living senses had solved the greatest of all mysteries—the final mystery; the mystery of eternity.

It happens nearly always, it is said, that the first awakening thought of those who die is of the tremendous happening that has come upon them. So it was with Sandy. For a while he lay quite still, with his hands folded, and a strange awful brooding, almost as though of fear, breathlessly wrapping his heart roundabout. But it was not for a long time that he lay thus, for suddenly, like a second flash of lightning in the gathering darkness of a cloud, the thought shot through him that no friends had come to meet and to greet him as they had come to meet and greet these others. Why had his wife not come to him? He turned his head; the chair beside him was empty; he was without even clothes to wear.

For a while he lay with closed eyes like one stunned. Then a sudden voice broke upon his ear, and he opened his eyes again and looked up. A tall man with calm face—almost a stern face—stood beside the bed looking down at him.

Somehow Sandy knew that he had no business in the bed now that he was awake, and, with a half-muttered apology, he made a motion as if to arise, then, remembering that there were no clothes for him to wear, he sank back again upon the pillow.

"Come," said the man, giving his cane a rap upon the floor, "you must get up; you have already been here longer than the law allows."

Sandy had been too long accustomed to self-abasement in the world he had left to question the authority of the man who spoke to him. "I can't help lying here, sir," said he, helplessly. "I've no clothes to wear." Then he added: "Maybe if you let my wife come to me, she'd bring me something to wear. I hear say, sir, that I've died, and that this is heaven. I don't know why she hasn't come to me. Everybody else here seems to have somebody to meet him but me."

"This is not heaven," said the man.

A long silence followed. "It's not hell, is it?" said Sandy, at last.

The man apparently did not choose to answer the question. "Come," said he, "you waste time in talk. Get up. Wrap the sheet around you, and come with me."

"Where are you going to take me?" said Sandy.

"No matter," said the other. "Do as I tell you." His voice was calm, dispassionate; there was nothing of anger in it, but there was that which said he must be obeyed.

Sandy drew the sheet upon which he lay about him, and then shuddering, half with nervous dread and half with cold, arose from the warm bed in which he lay.

The other turned, and without saying a word led the way down the length of the room, Sandy following close behind. The noise of talking ceased as they passed by the various beds, and all turned and looked after the two, some smiling, some laughing outright. Sandy, as he marched down the length of the room, heard the rustling laugh and felt an echo of the same dull humiliation he had felt when he had marched with the other guests of the East Haven Refuge to their daily task of paving Main Street. There as now the people laughed, and there in the same manner as they did now; and as he had there slouched in the body, so now he slouched heavily in the spirit after his conductor.

Opposite the end of the room where was the door through which the friends and visitors came and went was another door, low and narrow. Sandy's guide led the way directly to it, lifted the latch, and opened it. It led to a long entry beyond, gloomy and dark. This passageway was dully lighted by a small square window, glazed with clouded glass, at the further end of the narrow hall, upon which fronted a row of closed doors. The place was very damp and chill; a cold draught of air blew through the length of it, and Sandy, as the other closed the door through which they had just entered, and so shut out the noise beyond, heard distinctly the sound of running water. Without turning to the left or to the right, Sandy's guide led the way down the hall, stopping at last when he had reached a door near the further end. He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, chose one from among them, fitted it into the lock, and turned it.

"Go in there," said he, "and wash yourself clean, and then you shall have clothes to wear."

Sandy entered, and the door was closed behind him. The place in which he found himself was very cold, and the floor beneath his feet was wet and slimy. His teeth chattered and his limbs shuddered as he stood looking around him. The noise of flowing water sounded loud and clear through the silence; it was running from a leaden pipe into a wooden tank, mildewed and green with mould, that stood in the middle of the room. The stone-walls around, once painted white, were now also stained and splotched with great blotches of green and russet dampness. The only light that lit the place came in through a small, narrow, slatted window close to the ceiling, and opposite the doorway which he had entered. It was all gloomy, ugly, repellent.

There were some letters painted in red at the head of the wooden tank. He came forward and read them, not without some difficulty, for they were nearly erased.

This is the water of death!

Sandy started back so suddenly that he nearly fell upon the slippery floor. A keen pang of sudden terror shot through him; then a thought that some grotesque mockery was being played upon him. A second thought blew the first away like a breath of smoke, for it told him that there could be no mockery in the place to which he had come. His waking and all that had happened to him had much of nightmare grotesquery about it, but there was no grotesquery or no appearance of jesting about that man who had guided him to the place in which he now found himself. There was a calm, impassive, unemotional sternness about all that he said and did—official, automatonlike—that precluded the possibility of any jest or meaningless form. This must indeed be the water of death, and his soul told him that it was meant for him.

He turned dully, and walked with stumbling steps to the door. He felt blindly for a moment for the latch, then his hand touched it, and he raised it with a click. The sharp sound jarred through the silence, and Sandy did not open the door. He stood for a little while staring stupidly down upon the floor with his palm still upon the latch. Was the man who had brought him there waiting outside? Behind him lay the water of death, but he dared not open the door and chance the facing of that man. The sheet had fallen away from him, and now he stood entirely naked. He let the latch fall back to its place—carefully, lest it should again make a noise, and that man should hear it. Then he gathered the now damp and dirty sheet about him, and crouched down upon the cold floor close to the crack of the door.

There he sat for a while, every now and then shuddering convulsively with cold and terror, then by-and-by he began to cry.

There is something abjectly, almost brutally, pathetic in the ugly squalor of a man's tears. Sandy Graff crying, and now and then wiping his eyes with the damp and dirty sheet, was almost a more ugly sight than he had been in the maudlin bathos of his former drunkenness.

So he sat for a long time, until finally his crying ended, only for a sudden sob now and then, and he only crouched, wondering dully. At last he slowly arose, gathering the sheet still closer around him, and creeping step by step to the tank, looked down into its depth. The water was as clear as crystal; he dipped his hand into it—it was as cold as ice. Then he dropped aside the sheet, and stood as naked as the day he was born. He stepped into the water.

* * * * *

A deathly faintness fell upon him, and he clutched at the edge of the tank; but even as he clutched his sight failed, and he felt himself sinking down into the depths.

"Help!" he cried, hoarsely; and then the water closed blackly over his head.

* * * * *

He felt himself suddenly snatched out from the tank, warm towels were wrapped about him, his limbs were rubbed with soft linen, and at last he opened his eyes. He still heard the sound of running water, but now the place in which he was was no longer dark and gloomy. Some one had flung open the slatted window, and a great beam of warm, serene sunlight streamed in, and lay in a dazzling white square upon the wet floor. Two men were busied about him. They had wrapped his body in a soft warm blanket, and were wiping dry his damp, chilled, benumbed hands and feet.

"What does this mean?" said Sandy, faintly. "Was I not then to die, after all? Was not that the water of death?"

"The water of death?" said they. "You did not read the words aright; that was the water of life." They helped him dress himself in his clothes—clothes not unlike those which the East Haven Refuge had given its outgoing guests, only, somehow, these did not make him feel humiliated and abased as those had made him feel. Then they led him out of that place. They traversed the same long passageway through which he had come before, and so came to the bedroom which he had left. The tenants were all gone now, and the attendants were busied spreading the various beds with clean linen sheets and coverlets, as though for fresh arrivals.

No one seemed to pay any attention to him. His conductors led the way to the anteroom which Sandy had seen beyond.

A woman was sitting patiently looking out of the window. She turned her head as they entered, and Sandy, when he saw her face, stood suddenly still, as though turned to stone. It was his wife!

VI.

With Colonel Singelsby was no such nightmare awakening as with Sandy Graff; with him, were no such ugly visions and experiences; with him was no squalor and discomfort. Yet he also opened his eyes upon a room so like that upon which they had closed that at first he thought that he was still in the world. There was the same soft bed, the same warmth of ease and comfort, the same style of old-fashioned furniture. There were the curtained windows, the pictures upon the wall, the bright warm fire burning in the grate.

At first he saw all these things drowsily, as one does upon newly awakening. With him, as with Sandy, it was only when his conscious life had opened wide and clear enough to observe and to recognize who they were that were gathered around him that with a keen, almost agonizing thrill he realized where he was and what had befallen him. Upon one side of his bed stood his son Hubert; upon the other side stood his brother James. The one had died ten, the other nineteen years before. Of all those who had gone from the world which he himself had just left, these stood the nearest to him, and now, in his resurrection, his opening eyes first saw these two. They and other relatives and friends helped him to arise and dress, as Sandy had seen the poor wretches in the place in which he had awakened raised from their beds and dressed by their friends.

* * * * *

All Colonel Singelsby's teachings had told him that this was not so different from the world he had left behind. Nevertheless, although he was prepared somewhat for it, it was wonderful to him how alike the one was to the other. The city, the streets, the people coming and going, the stores, the parks, the great houses—all were just as they were in the world of men. He had no difficulty in finding his way about the streets. There, in comfortable houses of a better class, were many of his friends; others were not to be found; some, he was told, had ascended higher; others, he was also told, had descended lower.

Among other places, Colonel Singelsby found himself during the afternoon in the house of one with whom he had been upon friendly, almost intimate terms in times past in the world. Colonel Singelsby remembered hearing that the good man had died a few months before he himself had left the world. He wondered what had become of him, and then in a little while he found himself in his old friend's house. It had been many years since he had seen him. He remembered him as a benign, venerable old gentleman, and he had been somewhat surprised to find that he was still living in the town, instead of having ascended to a higher state.

The old gentleman still looked outwardly venerable, still outwardly benign, but now there was under his outer seeming a somewhat of restless querulousness, a something of uneasy discontent, that Colonel Singelsby did not remember to have seen there before. They talked together about many things, chiefly of those in the present state of existence in which they found themselves. It was all very new and vivid upon Colonel Singelsby's mind, but the reverend gentleman seemed constantly to forget that he was in another world than that which he had left behind. It seemed to be always with an effort that he brought himself to talk of the world in which he lived as the world of spirits. The visit was somehow unpleasant to Colonel Singelsby. He was impressed with a certain air of intolerance exhibited by the other. His mind seemed to dwell more upon the falsity of the old things than upon the truth of the new, and he seemed to take a certain delight in showing how and in what everybody but those of his own creed erred and fell short of the Divine intent, and not the least disagreeable part of the talk to Colonel Singelsby was that the other's words seemed to find a sort of echo in his own mind.

At last he proposed a walk, and the other, taking his hat and stick, accompanied him for a little distance upon the way. The talk still clung much to the same stem to which it had adhered all along.

"It is a very strange thing," said the reverend gentleman, "but a great many people who have come to this town since I came hither have left it again to ascend, as I have been told, to a higher state. I think there must have been some mistake, for I cannot see how it is possible—and in fact our teachings distinctly tell us that it is impossible—for one to ascend to a higher state without having accepted the new truths of the new order of things."

Colonel Singelsby did not make answer. He was not only growing tired of the subject itself, but of his old friend as well.

They were at that moment crossing an angle of a small park shaded by thin, spindly trees. As the Colonel looked up he saw three men and a woman approaching along the same path and under the flickering shadows. Two of the men walked a little in advance, the other walked with the woman. There was something familiar about two of the group, and Colonel Singelsby pointed at them with his finger.

"Who are they?" said he. "I am sure there is somebody I know."

The other adjusted his glasses and looked. "I do not know," said he, "except that one of the men is a new-comer. We somehow grow to know who are new-comers by the time we have lived here a little while."

"Dear me!" cried Colonel Singelsby, stopping abruptly, "I know that man. I did not know that he had come here too. I wonder where they are going?"

"I think," said the reverend gentleman, dryly—"I think that this is one of those cases of which I just spoke to you. I judge from the general appearance of the party that they are about to ascend, as they call it here, to a higher state."

"That is impossible!" said Colonel Singelsby. "That man is a poor wretched creature whom I have helped with charity again and again, it cannot be that he is to go to a higher state, for he is not fit for it. If he is to be taken anywhere, it must be to punishment."

The other shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, he had seen such cases too often during his sojourn to be deceived.

The little party had now come close to the two, and Colonel Singelsby stepped forward with all his old-time frank kindness of manner. "Why, Sandy," said he, "I did not know that you also had come here."

"Yes, sir," said Sandy; "I died the same night you did."

"Dear me!" said the Colonel, "that is very singular, very singular indeed! Where are you going now, Sandy?"

"I don't know," said Sandy; "these gentlemen here are taking me somewhere, I don't know where. This is my wife," said he. "Don't you remember her, sir?"

"Oh yes," said the Colonel, with his most pleasant air, "I remember her very well, but of course I am not so much surprised to see her here as I am to see you. But have you no idea where you are going?" he continued.

"No," said Sandy; "but perhaps these gentlemen can tell you." And he looked inquiringly at his escort, who stood calmly listening to what was said.

* * * * *

So far, the Parable, as I had read it, progressed onward with some coherence and concatenation, a coherence and concatenation growing perhaps more disjointed as it advanced. Now it began to be broken with interjectory sentences, and just here was one, the tenor of which I could not altogether understand, but have since comprehended more or less clearly. I cannot give its exact words, but only its general form.

"O wretched man," it said, "how pitiful are thy vain efforts and strivings to keep back by thine own strength that fiery flood of hell which grows and increases to overwhelm thy soul! If the inflowing of good which Jehovah vouchsafes is infinite, only less infinite is the outflowing of that which thou callest evil and wickedness. How, then, canst thou hope to stand against it and to conquer? How canst thou hope to keep back that raging torrent of fire and of flame with the crumbling unbaked bricks of thine own soul's making? Poor fool! Thou mayst endeavor, thou mayst strive, thou mayst build thy wall of defence higher and higher, fearing God, and living a life of virtue, but by-and-by thou wilt reach the end, and then wilt find thou canst build no higher! Then how vain shall have been thy life of resistance! First that flood shall trickle over the edge of thy defence; then it shall run a stream the breadth of a man's hand; then it shall gush forth a torrent; then, bursting over and through and around, it shall sweep away all that thou hast so laboriously built up, and shall rush, howling, roaring, raging, and burning through thy soul with ten thousand times the fury and violence that it would have done if thou hadst not striven to keep it back, if thou hadst not resisted and fought against it. For bear this in mind: Christ said he came not to call the good to repentance, but the evil, and if thou art full of thine own, how then canst thou hope to receive of a God that asketh not for sacrifice, but for love?"

Hence again the story resumed.

* * * * *

Colonel Singelsby had not before noticed the two men who were with Sandy, now he observed them more closely. They were tall, middle-aged men, with serious, placid, unemotional faces. Each carried a long white staff, the end of which rested upon the ground. There was about them something somehow different from anything Colonel Singelsby had ever seen before. They were most quiet, courteous men, but there was that in their personal appearance that was singularly unpleasant to Colonel Singelsby. Why, he could not tell, for they were evidently gentlemen, and, from their bearing, men of influence. He turned to Sandy again.

"How has it been with you since you have been here?" said he.

"It has been very hard with me," said Sandy, patiently; "very hard indeed; but I hope and believe now that the worst is over, and that by-and-by I shall be happy, and not have any more trouble."

"I trust so, indeed," said the Colonel; "but do not hope for too much, Sandy. Even the best men coming to this world are not likely to be rid of their troubles at once, and it is not to be hoped for that you, after your ill-spent life, should find your lot easier than theirs."

"I know, sir," said Sandy, "and I am very sorry."

There was a meek acceptance of the Colonel's dictum that grated somehow unpleasantly upon the Colonel's ears. He would rather that Sandy had made some protest against that dictum. He approached half a step and looked more keenly at the other, and then for the first time he saw that some great, some radical, some tremendous change had happened. The man before him was no doubt Sandy Graff, but all that was low-browed, evil, foul, was gone, as though it had been washed away, and in its place was a translucent, patient meekness, almost like—There was something so terribly vital in that change that Colonel Singelsby shuddered before it. He looked and looked, and then he passed the back of his hand across his eyes. "All this is very unreal," said he, turning to his friend the minister. "It is like a dream. I begin to feel as though nothing was real. Surely it is not possible that magic changes can go on, and yet I cannot understand all these things in the least."

For answer, the reverend gentleman shrugged his shoulders almost sourly.

"Gentlemen," said Colonel Singelsby, turning abruptly upon Sandy's escort, "let me ask you is this a certain man whom I used to know as Sandy Graff?"

One of the men nodded his head.

"And will you tell me," said he, "another thing? Will you kindly tell me where you are taking him?"

"We are about to take him," said the man, looking steadily at the Colonel as he answered—"we are about to take him to the outskirts of the First Kingdom."

At the answer Colonel Singelsby actually fell back a pace in his amazement. It was almost as though a blow had fallen upon him. "The outskirts of the First Kingdom?" said he. "Did I understand you? The outskirts of the First Kingdom? Surely there is some mistake here! It is not possible that this man, who died only yesterday, filthy and polluted with iniquity, stinking in the nostrils of God with ten thousand indulged and gratified lusts—it is not possible that you intend taking him to that land, passing by me, who all my life have lived to my best endeavors in love to God and my neighbor?"

It was the voice of his minister that broke the answer. "Yes, they do," said he, sharply; "that is just what they do mean. They do mean to take him, and they do mean to leave us, for such is the law in this dreadful place. We, the children of light, are nothing, and they, the fuel of hell, are everything. Have I not been telling you so?"

Colonel Singelsby had almost forgotten the presence of his acquaintance. He felt very angry at his interference, and somehow he could no longer govern his anger as he used to do. He turned upon him and fixed him with a frown, and then he observed for the first time that a little crowd had begun gathering, and now stood looking on, some curious and unsmiling, some grinning. The Colonel drew himself to his height, and looked haughtily about him. They who grinned began laughing. And now, at last, it was come Colonel Singelsby's turn to feel as Sandy Graff had felt—as though all that was happening to him was happening in some hideous nightmare dream. As in a dream, the balancing weights of reasoning and morality began to melt before the heat of that which burned within; as in a dream, the uncurbed inner motives began to strive furiously. Then a sudden fierce anger, quite like the savage irrational anger of an ugly dream, flamed up quickly and fiercely. He opened his lips as though to vent his rage, but for an instant his tottering reason regained a momentary poise. Checking himself with an effort ten thousand times greater than that he would have used in his former state and in the world, he bowed his head upon his breast and stood for a little while with fingers interlocked, clinching his trembling hands together. So he stood for a while, brooding, until at last Sandy and his escort made a motion as if to pass by. Then he spoke again.

"Stop a bit!" said he, looking up—"stop a bit!" His voice was hoarse and constrained, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but straight at that one of the men to whom he had spoken before. "Sir," said he, and then clearing his husky voice—"sir," again, "I have learned a lesson—the greatest lesson of my life! I have looked into my heart, and I have seen—I have seen myself—God help me, gentlemen!—I—maybe I am no better than this man."

The crowd, which had been increasing, as crowds do, began to jeer at the words, for, like most crowds, it was of a nether sort, and enjoyed the unusual sight of the gentleman and the aristocrat abasing and humiliating himself before the reformed drunkard.

At the sound of that ugly jeering laugh Colonel Singelsby quivered as though under the cut of a lancet, but he never removed his eyes from the man to whom he spoke. For a moment or two he bit his nether lip in his effort for self-control, and then repeated, in a louder and perhaps harsher voice, "I am no better than this man!" He paused for a moment, and the crowd ceased its jeering to hear what he had to say. "I ask only this," he said, "that you will take me where you are taking him, and that I may enjoy such happiness as he is about to enjoy."

Instantly a great roar of laughter went up from the crowd, which had now gathered to some twenty or thirty souls. The man to whom Colonel Singelsby had spoken shook his head calmly and impassively.

"It cannot be," said he.

Colonel Singelsby turned white to the very lips, his eyes blazed, and his breath came thick and heavily. His nostrils twitched spasmodically, but still, with a supreme effort—a struggle so terrible that few men happily may ever know it or experience it—he once more controlled the words that sprang to his lips and struggled for utterance. He swallowed and swallowed convulsively. "Sir," said he at last, in a voice so hoarse, so horribly constrained, that it seemed almost to rend him as it forced utterance—"sir, surely I am mistaken in what I understand; it is little I ask you, and surely not unjust. Yesterday this man was a vile, debauched drunkard; surely that does not make him fitter for heaven! Yesterday I was a God-fearing, law-abiding man, surely that does not make me unfit! I am not unfit, am I?"

"You are not yet fit for heaven," answered the man, with impassive calmness. And again, for the third time, the crowd roared with evil laughter.

Within Colonel Singelsby's soul that fiery flood was now lashing dreadfully close to the summit of its barriers. His face was as livid as death, and his hands were clinched till the nails cut into his palm. "Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty years has led a life of besotted sin and indulgence, and because I for sixty years have feared God and loved my neighbor, that he is to be chosen and I am to be left?"

The man did not reply in words, but in the steady look of his unwinking eyes the other read his answer.

"Then," gasped Colonel Singelsby, and as he spoke he shook his clinched and trembling fist against the still, blue sky overhead—"then, if that be God's justice, may it be damned, for I want none of it."

Then came the end, swiftly, completely. For the fourth time the crowd laughed, and at the sound those floodgates so laboriously built up during a lifetime of abstinence were suddenly burst asunder and fell crashing, and a burning flood of hell's own rage and madness rushed roaring and thundering into his depicted, empty soul, flaming, blazing, consuming like straws every precept of righteousness, every fear of God, and Colonel Edward Singelsby, the one-time Christian gentleman, the one-time upright son of grace, the one-time man of law and God, was transformed instantly and terribly into—what? Was it a livid devil from hell? He cursed the jeering crowd, and at the sound of his own curses a blindness fell upon him, and he neither knew what he said nor what he did. His good old friend, who had accompanied him so far and until now had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this way and that, and as madness begets madness, the curses that fell from one pair of lips found an echo in curses that leaped from others. Sandy shrunk back appalled before the hell-blast that breathed upon him, and he felt his wife clutch him closer. Only two of those that were there stood unmoved; they were the two men who acted as Sandy's escort. As the tide of madness seemed to swell higher, they calmly stepped forward and crossed their staves before their charge. There was something in their action full of significance for those who knew. Instantly the crowd melted away like snow under a blast of fire. Had there not been two men present more merciful than the rest, it is hard to say what terrible thing might not have happened to Colonel Edward Singelsby—deaf and dumb and blind to everything but his own rage. These two clutched him by the arms and dragged him back.

"God, man!" they cried, "what are you doing? Do you not see they are angels?"

They dragged him back to a bench that stood near, and there held him, whilst he still beat the air with his fist and cried out hoarse curses, and even as they so held him, two other men came—two men dark, silent, sinister—and led him away.

Then the other and his wife and his two escorts passed by and out of the gate of the town, and away towards the mountain that stood still and blue in the distance.

* * * * *

So far I read, and then I could bear to read no more, but placed my hand upon the open page of the book. "What is this dreadful thing?" I cried. "Is, then, a man punished for truth and justice and virtue and righteousness? Is it, then, true that the evil are rewarded, and that the good are punished so dreadfully?"

Then the man who held the book spoke again. "Take away thy hand and read," said he.

Then I took away my hand, and read as he bade me, and found these words:

"How can God fill with His own that which is already filled by man? First it must be emptied before it may be filled with the true good of righteousness and truth, of humility and love, of peace and joy. O thou foolish one who judgest but from the appearance of things, how long will it be before thou canst understand that while some may be baptized with water to cleanliness and repentance, others are baptized with living fire to everlasting life, and that they alone are the children of God?"

Then again I read these words:

"Woe to thee, thou who deniest the laws of God and man! Woe to thee, thou who walkest in the darkness of the shadow of sin and evil! But ten thousand times woe to thee, thou who pilest Pelion of self-good upon Ossa of self-truth, not that thou mayst scale therefrom the gate of Heaven, but that thou mayst hide thyself beneath from the eye of the Living God! By-and-by His Day shall come! His Terrible Lightning shall flash from the East to the West! His Dreadful Flaming Thunder-bolt shall fall, riving thy secret fastnesses to atoms, and leaving thee, poor worm, writhing in the dazzling effulgence of His Light, and shrivelling beneath the consuming flame of His Loving-kindness!"

Then the leaf was turned, and there before me lay the answer to that first question, "What shall a man do that he may gain the kingdom of Heaven?" There stood the words, plain and clear. But I did not dare to read them, but turning, left that place, shutting the door to behind me.

Never have I found that door or entered that room again, but by-and-by I know that I shall find them both once more, and shall then and there read the answer that forever stands written in that book, for it still lies open at the very page, and he upon whose knees it rests is Israfeel, the Angel of Death.

* * * * *

But what of the sequel? Is there a sequel? Are we, then, to suffer ourselves to do evil for the sake of shunning pain in the other world? I trow not! He who sets his foot to climb must never look backward and downward. He who suffers most must reach the highest. There must be another part of the story which lies darkly and dimly behind the letter. One can see, faintly and dimly but nevertheless clearly, what the poor man was to enjoy—the poor man who from without appeared to be so evil, and yet within was not really evil. One can see a vision faint and dim of a simple little house cooled by the dewy shade of green trees forever in foliage; one can see pleasant meadows and gardens forever green, stretching away to the banks of a smooth-flowing river in whose level bosom rests a mirrored image of that which lies beyond its farther bank—a great town with glistering walls and gleaming spires reaching tower above tower and height above height into the blazing blue, the awful serenity of a heavenly sky. One can know that toward that town the poor man who had sinned and repented would in the evenings gaze and wonder until his soul, now ploughed clean for new seed, might learn the laws that would make it indeed an inhabitant of that place. It is a serene and beautiful vision, but not different from that which all may see, and enjoy even, in part, in this world.

But how was it with that other man—with that good man who had never sinned until his earthly body was stripped away that he might sin and fall in the spirit—sin and fall to a depth so profound that even one furtive look into that awful abysm makes the minds of common men to reel and stagger? When that God-sent blast of fire should have burned out the selfhood that clung to the very vitals of his soul, what then? Who is there that with unwinking eyes may gaze into the effulgent brilliancy of the perfect angelhood? He who sweats drops of salt in his life's inner struggles shall, maybe, eat good bread in the dew of it, but he who sweats drops of blood in agony shall, when his labor is done, sit him, maybe, at the King's table, and feast upon the Flesh of Life and the very Wine of Truth.

Was it so with that man who never sinned until all his hell was let loose at once upon him?



The Little Room

BY MADELENE YALE WYNNE

"How would it do for a smoking-room?"

"Just the very place; only, you know, Roger, you must not think of smoking in the house. I am almost afraid having just a plain common man around, let alone a smoking-man, will upset Aunt Hannah. She is New England—Vermont New England boiled down."

"You leave Aunt Hannah to me; I shall find her tender side. I am going to ask her about the old sea-captain and the yellow calico."

"Not yellow calico—blue chintz."

"Well, yellow shell, then."

"No, no! don't mix it up so; you won't know yourself what to expect, and that's half the fun."

"Now you tell me again exactly what to expect; to tell the truth, I didn't half hear about it the other day; I was woolgathering. It was something queer that happened when you were a child, wasn't it?"

"Something that began to happen long before that, and kept happening, and may happen again; but I hope not."

"What was it?"

"I wonder if the other people in the car can hear us?"

"I fancy not; we don't hear them—not consecutively, at least."

"Well, mother was born in Vermont, you know; she was the only child by a second marriage. Aunt Hannah and Aunt Maria are only half-aunts to me, you know."

"I hope they are half as nice as you are."

"Roger, be still; they certainly will hear us."

"Well, don't you want them to know we are married?"

"Yes, but not just married. There's all the difference in the world."

"You are afraid we look too happy!"

"No; only I want my happiness all to myself."

"Well, the little room?"

"My aunts brought mother up; they were nearly twenty years older than she. I might say Hiram and they brought her up. You see, Hiram was bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather died Hiram said he 's'posed he went with the farm, 'long o' the critters,' and he has been there ever since. He was my mother's only refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. They make me think of the Maine woman who wanted her epitaph to be, 'She was a hard working woman.'"

"They must be almost beyond their working-days. How old are they?"

"Seventy, or thereabouts; but they will die standing; or, at least, on a Saturday night, after all the house-work is done up. They were rather strict with mother, and I think she had a lonely childhood. The house is almost a mile away from any neighbors, and off on top of what they call Stony Hill. It is bleak enough up there even in summer.

"When mamma was about ten years old they sent her to cousins in Brooklyn, who had children of their own, and knew more about bringing them up. She stayed there till she was married; she didn't go to Vermont in all that time, and of course hadn't seen her sisters, for they never would leave home for a day. They couldn't even be induced to go to Brooklyn to her wedding, so she and father took their wedding-trip up there."

"And that's why we are going up there on our own?"

"Don't, Roger; you have no idea how loud you speak."

"You never say so except when I am going to say that one little word."

"Well, don't say it, then, or say it very, very quietly."

"Well, what was the queer thing?"

"When they got to the house, mother wanted to take father right off into the little room; she had been telling him about it, just as I am going to tell you, and she had said that of all the rooms, that one was the only one that seemed pleasant to her. She described the furniture and the books and paper and everything, and said it was on the north side, between the front and back room. Well, when they went to look for it, there was no little room there; there was only a shallow china-closet. She asked her sisters when the house had been altered and a closet made of the room that used to be there. They both said the house was exactly as it had been built—that they had never made any changes, except to tear down the old wood-shed and build a smaller one.

"Father and mother laughed a good deal over it, and when anything was lost they would always say it must be in the little room, and any exaggerated statement was called 'little-roomy.' When I was a child I thought that was a regular English phrase, I heard it so often.

"Well, they talked it over, and finally they concluded that my mother had been a very imaginative sort of a child, and had read in some book about such a little room, or perhaps even dreamed it, and then had 'made believe,' as children do, till she herself had really thought the room was there."

"Why, of course, that might easily happen."

"Yes, but you haven't heard the queer part yet; you wait and see if you can explain the rest as easily.

"They stayed at the farm two weeks, and then went to New York to live. When I was eight years old my father was killed in the war, and mother was broken-hearted. She never was quite strong afterwards, and that summer we decided to go up to the farm for three months.

"I was a restless sort of a child, and the journey seemed very long to me; and finally, to pass the time, mamma told me the story of the little room, and how it was all in her own imagination, and how there really was only a china-closet there.

"She told it with all the particulars; and even to me, who knew beforehand that the room wasn't there, it seemed just as real as could be. She said it was on the north side, between the front and back rooms; that it was very small, and they sometimes called it an entry. There was a door also that opened out-of-doors, and that one was painted green, and was cut in the middle like the old Dutch doors, so that it could be used for a window by opening the top part only. Directly opposite the door was a lounge or couch; it was covered with blue chintz—India chintz—some that had been brought over by an old Salem sea-captain as a 'venture.' He had given it to Maria when she was a young girl. She was sent to Salem for two years to school. Grandfather originally came from Salem."

"I thought there wasn't any room or chintz."

"That is just it. They had decided that mother had imagined it all, and yet you see how exactly everything was painted in her mind, for she had even remembered that Hiram had told her that Maria could have married the sea-captain if she had wanted to!

"The India cotton was the regular blue-stamped chintz, with the peacock figure on it. The head and body of the bird were in profile, while the tail was full front view behind it. It had seemed to take mamma's fancy, and she drew it for me on a piece of paper as she talked. Doesn't it seem strange to you that she could have made all that up, or even dreamed it?

"At the foot of the lounge were some hanging-shelves with some old books on them. All the books were leather-colored except one; that was bright red, and was called the Ladies' Album. It made a bright break between the other thicker books.

"On the lower shelf was a beautiful pink sea-shell, lying on a mat made of balls of red-shaded worsted. This shell was greatly coveted by mother, but she was only allowed to play with it when she had been particularly good. Hiram had showed her how to hold it close to her ear and hear the roar of the sea in it.

"I know you will like Hiram, Roger, he is quite a character in his way.

"Mamma said she remembered, or thought she remembered, having been sick once, and she had to lie quietly for some days on the lounge; then was the time she had become so familiar with everything in the room, and she had been allowed to have the shell to play with all the time. She had had her toast brought to her in there, with make-believe tea. It was one of her pleasant memories of her childhood; it was the first time she had been of any importance to anybody, even herself.

"Right at the head of the lounge was a light-stand, as they called it, and on it was a very brightly polished brass candlestick and a brass tray, with snuffers. That is all I remember of her describing, except that there was a braided rag rug on the floor, and on the wall was a beautiful flowered paper—roses and morning-glories in a wreath on a light-blue ground. The same paper was in the front room."

"And all this never existed except in her imagination?"

"She said that when she and father went up there, there wasn't any little room at all like it anywhere in the house; there was a china-closet where she had believed the room to be."

"And your aunts said there had never been any such room?"

"That is what they said."

"Wasn't there any blue chintz in the house with a peacock figure?"

"Not a scrap, and Aunt Hannah said there had never been any that she could remember; and Maria just echoed her—she always does that. You see, Aunt Hannah is an up-and-down New England woman. She looks just like herself; I mean, just like her character. Her joints move up and down or backward and forward in a plain square fashion. I don't believe she ever leaned on anything in her life, or sat in an easy-chair. But Maria is different; she is rounder and softer; she hasn't any ideas of her own; she never had any. I don't believe she would think it right or becoming to have one that differed from Aunt Hannah's, so what would be the use of having any? She is an echo, that's all.

"When mamma and I got there, of course I was all excitement to see the china-closet, and I had a sort of feeling that it would be the little room after all. So I ran ahead and threw open the door, crying, 'Come and see the little room.'

"And, Roger," said Mrs. Grant, laying her hand in his, "there really was a little room there, exactly as mother had remembered it. There was the lounge, the peacock chintz, the green door, the shell, the morning-glory and rose paper, everything exactly as she had described it to me."

"What in the world did the sisters say about it?"

"Wait a minute and I will tell you. My mother was in the front hall still talking with Aunt Hannah. She didn't hear me at first, but I ran out there and dragged her through the front room, saying, 'The room is here—it is all right.'

"It seemed for a minute as if my mother would faint. She clung to me in terror. I can remember now how strained her eyes looked and how pale she was.

"I called out to Aunt Hannah and asked her when they had had the closet taken away and the little room built; for in my excitement I thought that that was what had been done.

"'That little room has always been there,' said Aunt Hannah, 'ever since the house was built.'

"'But mamma said there wasn't any little room here, only a china-closet, when she was here with papa,' said I.

"'No, there has never been any china-closet there; it has always been just as it is now,' said Aunt Hannah.

"Then mother spoke; her voice sounded weak and far off. She said, slowly, and with an effort, 'Maria, don't you remember that you told me that there had never been any little room here? and Hannah said so too, and then I said I must have dreamed it?'

"'No, I don't remember anything of the kind,' said Maria, without the slightest emotion. 'I don't remember you ever said anything about any china-closet. The house has never been altered; you used to play in this room when you were a child, don't you remember?'

"'I know it,' said mother, in that queer slow voice that made me feel frightened. 'Hannah, don't you remember my finding the china-closet here, with the gilt-edge china on the shelves, and then you said that the china-closet had always been here?'

"'No,' said Hannah, pleasantly but unemotionally—'no, I don't think you ever asked me about any china-closet, and we haven't any gilt-edged china that I know of.'

"And that was the strangest thing about it. We never could make them remember that there had ever been any question about it. You would think they could remember how surprised mother had been before, unless she had imagined the whole thing. Oh, it was so queer! They were always pleasant about it, but they didn't seem to feel any interest or curiosity. It was always this answer: 'The house is just as it was built; there have never been any changes, so far as we know.'

"And my mother was in an agony of perplexity. How cold their gray eyes looked to me! There was no reading anything in them. It just seemed to break my mother down, this queer thing. Many times that summer, in the middle of the night, I have seen her get up and take a candle and creep softly down-stairs. I could hear the steps creak under her weight. Then she would go through the front room and peer into the darkness, holding her thin hand between the candle and her eyes. She seemed to think the little room might vanish. Then she would come back to bed and toss about all night, or lie still and shiver; it used to frighten me.

"She grew pale and thin, and she had a little cough; then she did not like to be left alone. Sometimes she would make errands in order to send me to the little room for something—a book, or her fan, or her handkerchief; but she would never sit there or let me stay in there long, and sometimes she wouldn't let me go in there for days together. Oh, it was pitiful!"

"Well, don't talk any more about it, Margaret, if it makes you feel so," said Mr. Grant.

"Oh yes, I want you to know all about it, and there isn't much more—no more about the room.

"Mother never got well, and she died that autumn. She used often to sigh, and say, with a wan little laugh, 'There is one thing I am glad of, Margaret: your father knows now all about the little room.' I think she was afraid I distrusted her. Of course, in a child's way, I thought there was something queer about it, but I did not brood over it. I was too young then, and took it as a part of her illness. But, Roger, do you know, it really did affect me. I almost hate to go there after talking about it; I somehow feel as if it might, you know, be a china-closet again."

"That's an absurd idea."

"I know it; of course it can't be. I saw the room, and there isn't any china-closet there, and no gilt-edged china in the house, either."

And then she whispered, "But, Roger, you may hold my hand as you do now, if you will, when we go to look for the little room."

"And you won't mind Aunt Hannah's gray eyes?"

"I won't mind anything."

It was dusk when Mr. and Mrs. Grant went into the gate under the two old Lombardy poplars and walked up the narrow path to the door, where they were met by the two aunts.

Hannah gave Mrs. Grant a frigid but not unfriendly kiss; and Maria seemed for a moment to tremble on the verge of an emotion, but she glanced at Hannah, and then gave her greeting in exactly the same repressed and non-committal way.

Supper was waiting for them. On the table was the gilt-edged china. Mrs. Grant didn't notice it immediately, till she saw her husband smiling at her over his teacup; then she felt fidgety, and couldn't eat. She was nervous, and kept wondering what was behind her, whether it would be a little room or a closet.

After supper she offered to help about the dishes, but, mercy! she might as well have offered to help bring the seasons round; Maria and Hannah couldn't be helped.

So she and her husband went to find the little room, or closet, or whatever was to be there.

Aunt Maria followed them, carrying the lamp, which she set down, and then went back to the dish-washing.

Margaret looked at her husband. He kissed her, for she seemed troubled; and then, hand in hand, they opened the door. It opened into a china-closet. The shelves were neatly draped with scalloped paper; on them was the gilt-edged china, with the dishes missing that had been used at the supper, and which at that moment were being carefully washed and wiped by the two aunts.

Margaret's husband dropped her hand and looked at her. She was trembling a little, and turned to him for help, for some explanation, but in an instant she knew that something was wrong. A cloud had come between them; he was hurt; he was antagonized.

He paused for an appreciable instant, and then said, kindly enough, but in a voice that cut her deeply:

"I am glad this ridiculous thing is ended; don't let us speak of it again."

"Ended!" said she. "How ended?" And somehow her voice sounded to her as her mother's voice had when she stood there and questioned her sisters about the little room. She seemed to have to drag her words out. She spoke slowly: "It seems to me to have only just begun in my case. It was just so with mother when she—"

"I really wish, Margaret, you would let it drop. I don't like to hear you speak of your mother in connection with it. It—" He hesitated, for was not this their wedding-day? "It doesn't seem quite the thing, quite delicate, you know, to use her name in the matter."

She saw it all now: he didn't believe her. She felt a chill sense of withering under his glance.

"Come," he added, "let us go out, or into the dining-room, somewhere, anywhere, only drop this nonsense."

He went out; he did not take her hand now—he was vexed, baffled, hurt. Had he not given her his sympathy, his attention, his belief—and his hand?—and she was fooling him. What did it mean?—she so truthful, so free from morbidness—a thing he hated. He walked up and down under the poplars, trying to get into the mood to go and join her in the house.

Margaret heard him go out; then she turned and shook the shelves; she reached her hand behind them and tried to push the boards away; she ran out of the house on to the north side and tried to find in the darkness, with her hands, a door, or some steps leading to one. She tore her dress on the old rose-tree, she fell and rose and stumbled, then she sat down on the ground and tried to think. What could she think—was she dreaming?

She went into the house and out into the kitchen, and begged Aunt Maria to tell her about the little room—what had become of it, when had they built the closet, when had they bought the gilt-edged china?

They went on washing dishes and drying them on the spotless towels with methodical exactness; and as they worked they said that there had never been any little room, so far as they knew; the china-closet had always been there, and the gilt-edged china had belonged to their mother, it had always been in the house.

"No, I don't remember that your mother ever asked about any little room," said Hannah. "She didn't seem very well that summer, but she never asked about any changes in the house; there hadn't ever been any changes."

There it was again: not sign of interest, curiosity, or annoyance, not a spark of memory.

She went out to Hiram. He was telling Mr. Grant about the farm. She had meant to ask him about the room, but her lips were sealed before her husband.

Months afterwards, when time had lessened the sharpness of their feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon, which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away, not to be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something inexplicable on any ordinary theory.

Margaret alone in her heart knew that her mother's words carried a deeper significance than she had dreamed of at the time. "One thing I am glad of, your father knows now," and she wondered if Roger or she would ever know.

Five years later they were going to Europe. The packing was done; the children were lying asleep, with their travelling things ready to be slipped on for an early start.

Roger had a foreign appointment. They were not to be back in America for some years. She had meant to go up to say good-by to her aunts; but a mother of three children intends to do a great many things that never get done. One thing she had done that very day, and as she paused for a moment between the writing of two notes that must be posted before she went to bed, she said:

"Roger, you remember Rita Lash? Well, she and Cousin Nan go up to the Adirondacks every autumn. They are clever girls, and I have intrusted to them something I want done very much."

"They are the girls to do it, then, every inch of them."

"I know it, and they are going to."

"Well?"

"Why, you see, Roger, that little room—"

"Oh—"

"Yes, I was a coward not to go myself, but I didn't find time, because I hadn't the courage."

"Oh! that was it, was it?"

"Yes, just that. They are going, and they will write us about it."

"Want to bet?"

"No; I only want to know."

* * * * *

Rita Lash and Cousin Nan planned to go to Vermont on their way to the Adirondacks. They found they would have three hours between trains, which would give them time to drive up to the Keys farm, and they could still get to the camp that night. But, at the last minute, Rita was prevented from going. Nan had to go to meet the Adirondack party, and she promised to telegraph her when she arrived at the camp. Imagine Rita's amusement when she received this message: "Safely arrived; went to the Keys farm; it is a little room."

Rita was amused, because she did not in the least think Nan had been there. She thought it was a hoax; but it put it into her mind to carry the joke further by really stopping herself when she went up, as she meant to do the next week.

She did stop over. She introduced herself to the two maiden ladies, who seemed familiar, as they had been described by Mrs. Grant.

They were, if not cordial, at least not disconcerted at her visit, and willingly showed her over the house. As they did not speak of any other stranger's having been to see them lately, she became confirmed in her belief that Nan had not been there.

In the north room she saw the roses and morning-glory paper on the wall, and also the door that should open into—what?

She asked if she might open it.

"Certainly," said Hannah; and Maria echoed, "Certainly."

She opened it, and found the china-closet. She experienced a certain relief; she at least was not under any spell. Mrs. Grant left it a china-closet; she found it the same. Good.

But she tried to induce the old sisters to remember that there had at various times been certain questions relating to a confusion as to whether the closet had always been a closet. It was no use; their stony eyes gave no sign.

Then she thought of the story of the sea-captain, and said, "Miss Keys, did you ever have a lounge covered with India chintz, with a figure of a peacock on it, given to you in Salem by a sea-captain, who brought it from India?"

"I dun'no' as I ever did," said Hannah. That was all. She thought Maria's cheeks were a little flushed, but her eyes were like a stone-wall.

She went on that night to the Adirondacks. When Nan and she were alone in their room she said. "By-the-way, Nan, what did you see at the farm-house? and how did you like Maria and Hannah?"

Nan didn't mistrust that Rita had been there, and she began excitedly to tell her all about her visit. Rita could almost have believed Nan had been there if she hadn't known it was not so. She let her go on for some time, enjoying her enthusiasm, and the impressive way in which she described her opening the door and finding the "little room." Then Rita said: "Now, Nan, that is enough fibbing. I went to the farm myself on my way up yesterday, and there is no little room, and there never has been any; it is a china-closet, just as Mrs. Grant saw it last."

She was pretending to be busy unpacking her trunk, and did not look up for a moment; but as Nan did not say anything, she glanced at her over her shoulder. Nan was actually pale, and it was hard to say whether she was most angry or frightened. There was something of both in her look. And then Rita began to explain how her telegram had put her in the spirit of going up there alone. She hadn't meant to cut Nan out. She only thought—Then Nan broke in: "It isn't that; I am sure you can't think it is that. But I went myself, and you did not go; you can't have been there, for it is a little room."

Oh, what a night they had! They couldn't sleep. They talked and argued, and then kept still for a while, only to break out again, it was so absurd. They both maintained that they had been there, but both felt sure the other one was either crazy or obstinate beyond reason. They were wretched; it was perfectly ridiculous, two friends at odds over such a thing; but there it was—"little room," "china-closet,"—"china-closet," "little room."

The next morning Nan was tacking up some tarlatan at a window to keep the midges out. Rita offered to help her, as she had done for the past ten years. Nan's "No, thanks," cut her to the heart.

"Nan," said she, "come right down from that stepladder and pack your satchel. The stage leaves in just twenty minutes. We can catch the afternoon express train, and we will go together to the farm. I am either going there or going home. You better go with me."

Nan didn't say a word. She gathered up the hammer and tacks, and was ready to start when the stage came round.

It meant for them thirty miles of staging and six hours of train, besides crossing the lake; but what of that, compared with having a lie lying round loose between them! Europe would have seemed easy to accomplish, if it would settle the question.

At the little junction in Vermont they found a farmer with a wagon full of meal-bags. They asked him if he could not take them up to the old Keys farm and bring them back in time for the return train, due in two hours.

They had planned to call it a sketching trip, so they said, "We have been there before, we are artists, and we might find some views worth taking, and we want also to make a short call upon the Misses Keys."

"Did ye calculate to paint the old house in the picture?"

They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it, anyway.

"Waal, I guess you are too late. The house burnt down last night, and everything in it."



The Bringing of the Rose

BY HARRIET LEWIS BRADLEY

For certain subjects one of the most valuable works of reference in all Berlin was Miss Olivia Valentine's "Adress-buch," the contents of which were self-collected, self-tested, and abounded in extensive information concerning hotels and pensions, apartments and restaurants, families offering German home life with the language, instructors, and courses of lectures, doctors, dentists, dressmakers, milliners, the most direct way to Mendelssohn's grave in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchhof, how to find lodgings in Baireuth during the Wagner festival, where to stay in Oberammergau, if it happened to be the year of the Passion Play, and so on, indefinitely.

Miss Valentine herself was a kind-hearted, middle-aged woman, who, as the result of much sojourning in foreign lands, possessed an intelligent knowledge of subjects likely to be of use to other sojourners, and who was cordially ready to share the same, according to the needs of the season. If it were November, people came asking in what manner they could take most profitable advantage of a Berlin winter; if it were approaching spring, they wanted addresses for Paris or Switzerland or Italy. It was March now and Sunday afternoon. Mr. Morris Davidson sat by Miss Valentine's table, the famous "Adress-buch" in his hand. "I suppose you don't undertake starting parties for heaven?" he said, opening the book. "Ah! here it is—'Himmel und Hoelle.' I might have known it, you are so thorough."

"If you read a little further," remarked Miss Valentine, "you will see that 'Himmel und Hoelle' is a German game."

"Oh yes, I remember now; we play it at our pension. It's that game where you say 'thou' to the you-people, and 'you' to the thou-people, and are expected to address strange ladies whom you are meeting for the first time as Klara and Charlotte and Wilhelmine, with most embarrassing familiarity, and it is very stupid if the game happens to send you to heaven. I wonder if there really is such a locality? I've been thinking lately I should like to go there; things don't seem to agree with me very well here. I've closed my books, walked the Thiergarten threadbare, sleep twelve hours out of twenty-four, do everything I've been told to do, with no result whatever except to grow duller." The young man yawned as he spoke. "Do excuse me; I've come to such a pass that I'm not able to look any one in the face without yawning. All things considered, I am afraid I shouldn't be any better off in heaven. I'm afraid I couldn't stand the people, there must be so many of them. I want to get away from people."

"I know exactly where to send you," said Miss Valentine. "I was thinking about it when you came in. It isn't heaven, but it is very near it, and it also begins with H; and you are sure to like it—that is, unless you object to the ghost."

"Oh, not in the least; only is the rest of it all right? Things are not, generally; either the drainage is bad or there is a haunted room, and every one who sleeps in it dies, and of course one cannot help sleeping in it, just to see how it is going to work."

"Nothing of the kind," returned Miss Valentine; "the drainage is excellent; and as for the haunted room, I once shared it half a summer with a niece and namesake of mine, and we were never troubled by any unusual occurrence, and we are both in excellent health and likely to remain so. The ghost is reported to have a Mona Lisa face, to be dressed in black, with something white and fluffy at the neck and sleeves, gold bracelets, a necklace and ring of black pearls, and she carries a rose. If her appearance means death or misfortune, the rose is white; if she is only straying about in a friendly way, the rose is red.

"The place is called the Halden—the Hill-side. I have taken the precaution to state vaguely that it is in the neighborhood of Zurich; I want to do all in my power to keep the spot unspoiled. There is so little left in Switzerland that is not tired of being looked at—the trees are tired, and the grass, and the waterfalls; but here is a sweet hidden-away nook, where everything is as fresh as before the days of foreign travel. I am going to provide you with the directions for finding it."

She sat down by the writing-desk, and presently gave a slip of paper to Morris Davidson, who put it carefully in his pocket-book.

"The castle of the Halden," Miss Valentine continued, "belonged to a certain countess, by name Maria Regina. There is a tradition that one night a mist coming down from the mountain concealed the castle from the village, and when it lifted, behold! the countess and her entire household had vanished forever, and not a word was ever heard from them again. The ghost-lady is supposed to be a sister of the Countess Maria Regina, and in some way connected with the death of a young Austrian officer who figures as a lover in the story; just whose lover no one seems to know, but it is surmised of Maria Regina's daughter, said to be a very aristocratic and haughty young person. The castle remained closed after this mysterious occurrence for about two hundred years, and then an enterprising Swiss-German had it put in order for a summer hotel. What are you doing? I believe you are making extracts from my 'Adress-buch.' Now that is something I never allow. I like to give out information discriminately, with personal explanations."

The young man showed what he had written. "Just a hint or two for Italy," he said. "I may go down there next week. If I do, I shall certainly turn aside and tarry a little at your Halden. I should like to try whether your ghost-lady would lead me into any adventure."

Miss Valentine did not see Morris Davidson again, but a few weeks later she received a letter bearing a Swiss postmark:

"DEAR MISS VALENTINE,—I am here, and in order to give complete proof of it I sacrifice my prejudice and write on ruled paper, with purple ink and an unpleasant pen, that it may be all of the Halden. The place is exactly what I wanted and needed. I am so delighted to have it to myself. I am the only guest in the castle, the only stranger in the town. I came to stay a day; I intend now to stay a week. Yesterday, my first whole day, was perfect. I went by train to Muehlehorn, and walked from there to Wallenstadt, came back for dinner, and in the afternoon climbed the hill to Amden, where I found a hepatica in bloom, and had a beautiful view of the sunset. This morning there is a mist on the mountains, which is slowly rising, so I am using the time for letter-writing. Mountain-climbing is not yet inviting, owing to the snow; but, on the whole, the season of the year is not at all unfavorable. The loneliness is what I like best. The people do not interest me; I avoid them, and must appear in their eyes even more deluded than I am to come to this secluded spot at this unseasonable moment and be satisfied with my own society—no, not my own society, but that of these kind brotherly mountains. From a prosaic pedant I can almost feel myself becoming an ecstatical hermit, and my soul getting ready to

'smooth itself out a long cramped scroll. Freshening and fluttering in the wind.'

What a solid satisfaction it is to have a few days free from railroad travel! I have made a roundabout journey, coming here by way of Dresden, Leipsic, Cologne, Bonn, Frankfort, Heidelberg, Strasburg, Freiburg, Basel, and Zurich. It was all pleasant, but I am glad it is over. Please never advertise the Halden as a health-resort; let it remain a complete secret between us two, so that when we wish to leave everything and hermitize we may have the opportunity. If it were not for betraying this secret, I should like to recommend the castle for its generosity. At breakfast I have put beside my plate a five-pound loaf of bread, one slice of which is fifteen inches long by six wide, and thick ad libitum dimensions, the delicacy of which even a Prussian soldier would call into question.

"I haven't attempted to tell you what I think of your Halden. It is impossible. I simply give myself over to a few days of happiness and rest; all too soon I shall have to face the busy world again.