cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the
creature. Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or
whatever it may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too
many well-authenticated instances to allow its being questioned. But
suppose Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its
extremest degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to
which he had condemned himself. He might shun the firesides of the old
women whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy
dames do not make up the whole population.

These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very
much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and
inquiring persons. This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable
gift of the evil eye. He was in frequent communication with Italy, as
his letters showed, and had recently been residing in that country, as
was learned from Paolo. Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not
rarely met with in Italy. Everybody who has ever read Mr. Story's "Roba
di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil
eye exercises. It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon. No
person's life or limb is safe if the jettatura, the withering glance of
the deadly organ, falls upon him. It must be observed that this malign
effect may follow a look from the holiest personages, that is, if we may
assume that a monk is such as a matter of course. Certainly we have
a right to take it for granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an
eminently holy man, and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and
dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing. If Maurice Kirkwood carried
that destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be
feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could easily
be understood why he kept his look away from all around him whom he
feared he might harm.

No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil
eye, but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
putting any real confidence in them. It was just suited to the romantic
notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had meddled more
or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new fancy, if it were
only wild en