now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one thought: to
complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the
haunted wood, might some time rescue him if he should be denied the
blessing of annihilation. He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig
in his fingers rilling blood without renewal; but in the middle of a
sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to
his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out,
he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead
eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of
the grave!

II

In his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his parents in Nashville,
Tennessee. The Fraysers were well-to-do, having a good position in
such society as had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their
children had the social and educational opportunities of their time
and place, and had responded to good associations and instruction
with agreeable manners and cultivated minds. Halpin being the
youngest and not over robust was perhaps a trifle "spoiled." He had
the double disadvantage of a mother's assiduity and a father's
neglect. Frayser pere was what no Southern man of means is not--a
politician. His country, or rather his section and State, made
demands upon his time and attention so exacting that to those of his
family he was compelled to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder
of the political captains and the shouting, his own included.

Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent and rather romantic turn,
somewhat more addicted to literature than law, the profession to
which he was bred. Among those of his relations who professed the