she thought as she turned to her work again. She would not indulge herself
by changing her seat, but kept her place with her back to the cellar door,
though she could not help now and then casting a glance over her shoulder.
Neither shadow nor substance, however, made itself manifest.

That same night Miss Sophonisba woke from her sleep with the feeling that
some one had called her. She found herself mistaken, however, and lay
quietly awake, thinking over the events of the afternoon. The more she
thought the more puzzled, and even provoked, did she become. She was one
of those people who cannot bear to feel themselves incapable of accounting
for anything that is brought under their notice. A mystery, as such, is an
exasperation to them, and they will sometimes adopt an explanation more
perplexing than the phenomenon itself, rather than say, "I don't know." As
she lay there thinking over the matter, and trying to make herself believe
that the afternoon's experience was the effect of the wind or her own
fancy, she was startled by a step on the floor of the lower room--the same
light step. It crossed the floor, and she heard it on the stairs. Miss
Sophonisba raised her head from her pillow and looked around. There could
be no doubt that she was awake. She could see everything in the room: her
sister slept quietly at her side, and the moonlight shone in brightly at
the window. The slow step came up the stairs and in at the open door. She
heard it on the boards: her eyes beheld the shadow of her sister's vision,
so wavering and indistinct that she could not say with certainty that it
wore the semblance of a human form. The blood at her heart seemed to stand
still, but yet she neither screamed nor fainted, nor tried to wake her
sister. She watched the Thing as it moved to and fro in the chamber.
Suddenly it came toward her, and stood at the bedside, seeming indeed, as
Faithful had said, to be "all around her in the air," and weigh upon her
with a sense of oppression almost unendurable as the shadowy Presence
obscured the moonbeams. Miss Sophonisba bent all her will to the effort,