in the
atmosphere and a storm coming. I laid my pocket-book and pencil on
the table, and rose to go out again under the trees. Even the trifling
effort to cross the room was an effort made in vain. I stood rooted to
the spot, with my face turned toward the moonlight streaming in at the
open door.

An interval passed, and as I still looked out through the door, I became
aware of something moving far down among the trees that fringed the
shore of the lake. The first impression produced on me was of two gray
shadows winding their way slowly toward me between the trunks of the
trees. By fine degrees the shadows assumed a more and more marked
outline, until they presented themselves in the likeness of two robed
figures, one taller than the other. While they glided nearer and nearer,
their gray obscurity of hue melted away. They brightened softly with an
inner light of their own as they slowly approached the open space before
the door. For the third time I stood in the ghostly presence of Mrs.
Van Brandt; and with her, holding her hand, I beheld a second apparition
never before revealed to me, the apparition of her child.

Hand-in-hand, shining in their unearthly brightness through the bright
moonlight itself, the two stood before me. The mother's face looked at
me once more with the sorrowful and pleading eyes which I remembered so
well. But the face of the child was innocently radiant with an angelic
smile. I waited in unutterable expectation for the word that was to be
spoken, for the movement that was to come. The movement came first.
The child released its hold on the mother's hand, and floating slowly
upward, remained poised in midair--a softly glowing presence shining out
of the dark background of the trees. The mother glided into the room,
and stopped at the table on which I had laid my pocket-book and pencil
when I could no longer write. As before, she took the pencil and wrote
on the blank page. As before, she beckoned to me to step nearer to her.
I approached her outstretched hand, and felt once more the mysterious
rapture of her touch on my bosom, and heard once more her low, melodious
tones repeating the words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped
from my bosom. The pale light which revealed her to me quivered, sunk,
vanished. She had spoken. She had gone.

I drew to me the open pocket-book. And this time I saw, in the writing
of the ghostly hand, these words only:

_"Follow the Ch