thing was so well done, and the figure had such an air of
dignity, that somehow it was not so easy to make light of it in
talking with him.

I went into his room, next day. His sick-headache, or whatever it
was, had come on again, and he was lying on his bed. Rutherford's
strange old book on the Second Sight lay open before him. "Look
there," he said; and I read the motto of a chapter:--
"In sunlight one,
In shadow none,
In moonlight two,
In thunder two,
Then comes Death."

I threw the book indignantly from me, and began to invent
doggerel, parodying this precious incantation. But Severance did
not seem to enjoy the joke, and it grows tiresome to enact one's
own farce and do one's own applauding.

For several days after he was laid up in earnest; but instead of
getting any mental rest from this, he lay poring over that
preposterous book, and it really seemed as if his brain were a
little disturbed. Meanwhile I watched the great house, day and
night, sought for footsteps, and, by some odd fancy, took
frequent observations on the gardener and his wife. Failing to
get any clew, I waited one day for Paul's absence, and made a
call upon the wife, under pretence of hunting up a missing
handkerchief,--for she had been my laundress. I found the
handsome, swarthy creature, with her six bronzed children around
her, training up the Madeira vine that made a bower of the whole