splendor to an infinite field of tender and dark violet, fretted
with intense small stars.

"What shall I do?" she thought. "I am a woman. My father is poor. I
have got no chance. Jurildy is happier to-day than I am, and got more
sense."

She heard a timid rap at her door, and asked, sharply:

"Who's there?"

"It's me," said Sleeny's submissive voice.

"What do you want?" she asked again, without moving.

"Mr. Bott give me two tickets to his seance tonight,"--Sam called it
"seeuns,"--"and I thought mebbe you'd like to go."

There was silence for a moment. Maud was thinking: "At any rate it will
be better than to sit here alone and cry all the evening." So she said:
"I'll come down in a minute." She heard Sam's heavy step descending the
stairs, and thought what a different tread another person had; and she
wondered whether she would ever "do better" than take Sam Sleeny; but
she at once dismissed the thought. "I can't do that; I can't put my
hand in a hand that smells so strong of sawdust as Sam's. But he is a
good soul, and I am sorry for him, every time I look in the glass."

Looking in the glass, as usual, restored her good humor, and she
started off to the ghostly rendezvous with her faithful attendant. They
never talked very much when they were alone together, and this evening
both were thoughtful. Maud had never taken this commerce with ghosts
much to heart. She had a feeling, which she could hardly have defined,
that it was a common and plebeian thing to believe in it, and if she
ever heard it ridiculed she joined in the cry without mercy. But it was
an excitement and an interest in a life so barren of both that she
could not afford to throw it away. She had not intelligence enough to
be disgusted or shocked by it. If pressed to explain the amount of her
faith in the whole business, she would probably have said she thought
"there was something in it," and stopped at that. In minds like hers,
there is no clearly drawn line between the unusual and the
supernatural. An apparent miracle pleased her as it would please a
child, without setting her to find out how it was done. She would
consult a wizard, taking the chances of his having occult sources of
information, with the same irregular faith in the unlikely with which
some ladies call in homoeopathic practitioners.

All the way to the rooms of Bott, she was revolving this thought in her
mind: "Perhaps he could tell me something about Mr. Farnham. I don't