mirthful state; until, being asked by her master what was the matter,
she replied, "Massa, me know what became of the schoolmaster. Great
spider catch in his web and eat him!"

Whether that was the mode of his disappearance, or some other,
certainly the schoolmaster was gone; and the children were left in
great bewilderment at the sudden vacancy in his place. They had not
contracted a very yearning affection for him, and yet his impression
had been individual and real, and they felt that something was gone out
of their lives, now that he was no longer there. Something strange in
their circumstances made itself felt by them; they were more sensible
of the grim Doctor's uncouthness, his strange, reprehensible habits,
his dark, mysterious life,--in looking at these things, and the
spiders, and the graveyard, and their insulation from the world,
through the crystal medium of this stranger's character. In remembering
him in connection with these things, a certain seemly beauty in him
showed strikingly the unfitness, the sombre and tarnished color, the
outreness, of the rest of their lot. Little Elsie perhaps felt the loss
of him more than her playmate, although both had been interested by
him. But now things returned pretty much to their old fashion;
although, as is inevitably the case, whenever persons or things have
been taken suddenly or unaccountably out of our sphere, without telling
us whither and why they have disappeared, the children could not, for a
long while, bring themselves to feel that he had really gone. Perhaps,
in imitation of the custom in that old English house, of which the
Doctor had told them, little Elsie insisted that his place should still
be kept at the table; and so, whenever crusty Hannah neglected to do
so, she herself would fetch a plate, and a little pitcher of water, and
set it beside a vacant chair; and sometimes, so like a shadow had he
been, this pale, slender creature, it almost might have been thought