long there were half a dozen instances, some trivial, or
seemingly coincidental, but all forming our theory. There is one Ezekiel
recounted, as we sat here talking that night. It was just a matter of
old Horace MacNair's coming in on them once during a thunder-storm. The
family were sitting in the big hall; the ladies with their feet up on
chairs to insulate them from the lightning; young Vincent Ezekiel
teasing them by putting his on the mantelpiece. At one point in the
storm came a terrible crash, and Auber jumped up, starting toward the
door. Then he came back and sat down quietly. They laughed, and asked if
he had been struck.

"No," he said, quite seriously, "not by the lightning, but by a curious
idea that I saw Horace MacNair opening the door. I suppose I must have
dreamed it; I was nearly asleep."

The Ezekiels looked at one another in surprise, and Mrs. Ezekiel said:
"There is something curious in that, for the last time Horace was here,
just before he died, he came in the midst of a thunder-storm as we were
sitting here, much as we are now. And, why! I remember that he had come
over because he expected to see you, but you had not arrived."

"That's so," put in young Vincent, "because he said that if you had been
here, you wouldn't have been too afraid of the lightning to stand up and
shake hands. And by Jove! I had my feet on the mantelpiece! I remember
that, because when he saw me he laughed, and lined his up beside mine."

"He was wearing a gray rain-coat, and high overshoes that you made fun
of," added Auber, shortly, and then kept an embarrassed silence.

That was true, Ezekiel said; and Auber had not seen the man in five
years.

There were many cases which we strung that night on the threads of our
theory, all working toward its completion; and yet we neared the end
with misgiving and doubt, for we had the necessity of believing, if we
would keep ourselves still sane. All of us had noticed that so far as
there was an element of terror in the strange incidents, it lay in the
fact of a subtle undercurrent of connections, as if Fate were dimly
pointing all the while toward the invisible culmination. Suddenly there
would be a new manifestation of Auber's faculty, and a new instance
would be added, illusive, baffling, and yet forming each time new
threads in the vague warp and woof of something that we called our
theory. "There it is again," we would say to ourselves, as we sent the
ghostly shuttle flyi