also where his wife sat, with her knitting-work, and how to avoid his two
daughters, one a stout country lass, and the other a consumptive girl.
Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next to that of the son,
a learned collegian, who had come home to keep school in the village
during the winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room than
usual, to-night, between the collegian's chair and mine.

As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for some
time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular
click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times, the fire threw out a
brief and dusky gleam, which twinkled on the old man's glasses, and
hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the
individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the
scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in which departed people,
who had known and loved each other here, would hold communion in
eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not by sight, nor
sound, nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so
among the dead?

The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter, addressing a
remark to some one in the circle, whom she called Rachel. Her tremulous
and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice that
made me start, and bend towards the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I
ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so many old
recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things familiar, yet
unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her features who had
spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor? Whom had my heart
recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened, to catch her gentle
breathing, and strove, by the intensity of my gaze, to picture forth a
shape where none was visible.