have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops
against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-
line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary
point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro
before its beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the
window of a house on the hill-side. The house had been empty when
she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place
now.

Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she
was watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed
color, and at length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained
several minutes, and then it passed through violet to red.

Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she
sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of
this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less
than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost
every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had
hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll
which produced the season's changes; but here was something
dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign to local
habit and knowledge.

It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below
preparing to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding
being that of her father bolting the doors. Then the stairs
creaked, and her father and mother passed her chamber. The last
to come was Grammer Oliver.