fact itself arose, that he was aware of any perturbation. Even then,
amidst the tumult of his whirling emotions he had a sort of central calm,
in which he noted the particulars of the occurrence with distinctness and
precision. He had always supposed that if anything of the sort happened
to him he would be greatly frightened, but he had not been at all
frightened, so far as he could make out. His hair had not risen, or his
cheek felt a chill; his heart had not lost or gained a beat in its
pulsation; and his prime conclusion was that if the Mysteries had chosen
him an agent in approaching the material world they had not made a
mistake. This becomes grotesque in being put into words, but the words do
not misrepresent, except by their inevitable excess, the mind in which
Hewson rose, and flung open his shutters to let in the dawn upon the
scene of the apparition, which he now perceived must have been, as it
were, self-lighted. The robins were yelling from the trees and the
sparrows bickering under them; catbirds were calling from the thickets of
syringa, and in the nearest woods a hermit-thrush was ringing its crystal
bells. The clear day was penetrating the east with the subtle light which
precedes the sun, and a summer sweetness rose cool from the garden below,
gray with dew.

In the solitude of the hour there was an intimation of privity to the
event which had taken place, an implication of the unity of the natural
and the supernatural, strangely different from that robust gayety of the
plain day which later seemed to disown the affair, and leave the burden
of proof altogether to the human witness. By this time Hewson had already
set about to putting it in such phrases as should carry conviction to the
hearer, and yet should convey to him no suspicion of the pride which
Hewson felt in the incident as a sort of tribute to himself. He
dramatized the scene at breakfast when he should describe it in plain,
matter-of-fact terms, and hold every one spellbound, as he or she leaned