d. Moving without conscious will
of my own, drawn nearer and nearer to her by an irresistible power, I
ascended the short flight of stairs which led into the summer-house.
Within a few paces of her I stopped. She advanced a step toward me, and
laid her hand gently on my bosom. Her touch filled me with strangely
united sensations of rapture and awe. After a while, she spoke in low
melodious tones, which mingled in my ear with the distant murmur of the
falling water, until the two sounds became one. I heard in the murmur,
I heard in the voice, these words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand
dropped from my bosom; a momentary obscurity passed like a flying shadow
over the bright daylight in the room. I looked for her when the light
came back. She was gone.

My consciousness of passing events returned.

I saw the lengthening shadows outside, which told me that the evening
was at hand. I saw the carriage approaching the summerhouse to take us
away. I felt my mother's hand on my arm, and heard her voice speaking
to me anxiously. I was able to reply by a sign entreating her not to be
uneasy about me, but I could do no more. I was absorbed, body and soul,
in the one desire to look at the sketch-book. As certainly as I had
seen the woman, so certainly I had seen her, with my pencil in her hand,
writing in my book.

I advanced to the table on which the book was lying open. I looked at
the blank space on the lower part of the page, under the foreground
lines of my unfinished drawing. My mother, following me, looked at the
page too.

There was the writing! The woman had disappeared, but there were her
written words left behind her: visible to my mother as well as to me,
readable by my mother's eyes as well as by mine!

These were the words we saw, arranged in two lines, as I copy them here:

When the full moon shines
On Saint Anthony's Well.

CHAPTER IX. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL.

I POINTED to the writing in the sketch book, and looked at my mother. I
was not mistaken. She _had_ seen it, as I had seen it. But she refused
to acknowledge that anything had happened to alarm her--plainly as I
could detect it in her face.

"Somebody has been playing a trick on you, George," she said.

I made no reply. It was needless to say anything. My poor mother was
evidently as far from being satisfied with her own shallow explanation
as I was. The carriage waited for us at the door. We set forth