as if in the act of tearing it open.
A little foam flecked the blue lips.

Alta threw herself upon her mother's body, sobbing, "Oh, mamma, wake up!
do! do!"

"Is she dead?" asked Miss Ludington, in horrified accents.

"I don't know; I fear so. I warned her; I told her it would come. But she
would do it," cried the doctor incoherently, as he tried to feel her
pulse with one hand while he tore at the fastenings of her dress with the
other. He set Paul at work chafing the hands of the unconscious woman,
while Miss Ludington sprinkled her face and chest with ice-water from a
small pitcher that stood in a corner of the cabinet, and the doctor
himself endeavoured in vain to force some of the contents of a vial
through her clenched teeth. "It is of no use," he said, finally; "she is
past help--she is dead!"

At this Miss Ludington and Paul stood aside, and Alta, throwing herself
upon her mother's form, burst into an agony of tears. "She was all I
had," she sobbed.

"Had Mrs. Legrand friends?" asked Miss Ludington, conscience-stricken
with the thought that she had indirectly been in part responsible for
this terrible event.

"She had friends who will look after Alta," said Dr. Hull.

Their assistance being no longer needed, Miss Ludington and Paul turned
from the sad scene and stepped forth from the cabinet into the back
parlour.

The tragedy which they had just witnessed had to a great extent driven
from their thoughts the events of the seance which it had broken off so
abruptly. The impression left on their minds was that the spirit-form of
Ida had vanished in the blinding flood of gas-light through which they
had groped their way to the cabinet on hearing the death-rattle of the
medium.

But now in the remotest corner of the room, towards which they had last
seen the form of the spirit drifting, there stood a young girl. She was
bending forward, shielding her eyes with her right hand from the flaring
gas, as she peered curiously about the room, her whole attitude
expressive of complete bewilderment.

It was Ida; but what a change had passed upon her! This was no pale
spirit, counterfeiting for a few brief moments, with the aid of darkness,
the semblance of mortal flesh, but an unmistakable daughter of earth. Her
bosom was palpitating with agitation, and, instead of the lofty serenity
of a spirit, her eyes expressed the trouble of a perplexed girl who is
fast becoming frightened.

As Paul and Miss Ludington ste