rance;
and directly fronting me, where the body ought to have been, there was
only blank, transparent space, through which I could see the dim forms
of the objects beyond. I was fearfully startled, and ran shrieking to my
mother, telling what I had seen; and the house-girl whom she next sent
to shut the door, apparently affected by my terror, also returned
frightened, and said that she too had seen the woman's hand; which,
however, did not seem to be the case. And finally, my mother going to
the door, saw nothing, though she appeared much impressed by the
extremeness of my terror and the minuteness of my description. I
communicate the story, as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting
to explain it. The supposed apparition may have been merely a momentary
affection of the eye, of the nature described by Sir Walter Scott in his
"Demonology," and Sir David Brewster in his "Natural Magic." But if so,
the affection was one of which I experienced no after-return; and its
coincidence, in the case, with the probable time of my father's death,
seems at least curious.

There followed a dreary season, on which I still look back in memory, as
on a prospect which, sunshiny and sparkling for a time, has become
suddenly enveloped in cloud and storm. I remember my mother's long fits
of weeping, and the general gloom of the widowed household; and how,
after she had sent my two little sisters to bed,--for such had been the
increase of the family,--and her hands were set free for the evening,
she used to sit up late at night engaged as a seamstress, in making
pieces of dress for such of the neighbours as chose to employ her. My
father's new house lay untenanted at the time; and though his sloop had
been partially insured, the broker with whom he dealt was, it would
seem, on the verge of insolvency, and having raised objections to paying
the money, it was long ere any part of it could be realized. And so,
with all my mother's industry, the household would have fared out ill,
had it not been for the assistance lent her by her two brothers,
industrious, hard-working men, who lived with their aged parents, and an
unmarried sister, about a bow-shot away, and now not only advanced her
money as she needed it, but also took her second child, the elder of my
two sisters, a docile little girl of three years, to live with them. I
remember I used to go wandering disconsolately about the harbour at this
season, to examine the vessels which had