window higher up; the half-circle window
near the roof, I could not see from my present point of view.

Drawing back, I reclosed the shutter, lowered the window and started for
my own room. As I passed the first stair-head, I heard a baby's laugh,
followed by a merry shout, which, ringing through the house, seemed to
dispel all its shadows.

I had touched reality again. Remembering Mayor Packard's suggestion that
I might through the child find a means of reaching the mother, I paid
a short visit to the nursery where I found a baby whose sweetness must
certainly have won its mother's deepest love. Letty, the nurse, was of a
useful but commonplace type, a conscientious nurse, that was all.

But I was to have a further taste of the unusual that night and to
experience another thrill before I slept. My room was dark when I
entered it, and, recognizing a condition favorable to the gratification
of my growing curiosity in regard to the neighboring house, I approached
the window and stole a quick look at the gable-end where, earlier in the
evening I had seen peering out at me an old woman's face. Conceive my
astonishment at finding the spot still lighted and a face looking out,
but not the same face, a countenance as old, one as intent, but
of different conformation and of a much more intellectual type. I
considered myself the victim of an illusion; I tried to persuade myself
that it was the same woman, only in another garb and under a different
state of feeling; but the features were much too dissimilar for such
an hypothesis to hold. The eagerness, the unswerving attitude were
the same, but the first woman had had a weak round face with pinched
features, while this one showed a virile head and long heavy cheeks
and chin, which once must have been full of character, though they now
showed only heaviness of heart and the dull apathy of a fixed idea.

Two women, total strangers to me, united in an unceasing watch upon me
in my room! I own that the sense of mystery which this discovery brought
struck me at the moment as being fully as uncanny and as unsettling
to contemplate as the idea of a spirit haunting walls in which I was
destined for a while to live, breathe and sleep. However, as soon as I
had drawn the shade and lighted the gas, I forgot the whole thing, and
not till I was quite ready for bed, and my light again turned low, did
I feel the least desire to take another peep at that mysterious window.
The face was stil