o Mr. Roff's office.

"My girl," said he, "had a sound night's sleep after you and Dr. Stevens
left us; but to-day she asserts that she is Mary Roff, refuses to
recognize her mother or myself, and demands to be taken to your house."

At this amazing information, Mrs. Roff and her surviving daughter
Minerva, who since Mary's death had married a Mr. Alter, promptly went
to see Lurancy. From a seat at the window she beheld them approaching
down the street, and with an exultant cry exclaimed, "Here comes my ma,
and 'Nervie'!" the name by which Mary Roff had been accustomed to call
her sister in girlhood. Running to the door and throwing her arms about
them as they entered, she hugged and kissed them with expressions of
endearment and with whispering allusions to past events of which she as
Lurancy could in their opinion have had absolutely no knowledge.

Mr. Roff who came afterward, she greeted in the same affectionate way,
while treating the members of her own family as though they were entire
strangers. To her father and mother it seemed that this must be only a
new phase of her insanity, but to the Roffs there remained no doubt that
in her they beheld an actual reincarnation of the girl whom they had
buried twelve years before--that is to say, when Lurancy herself was a
puny, wailing infant. Eagerly they seconded her entreaties to be
allowed to return with them; and, Mrs. Vennum being completely
prostrated by this unexpected development, it was soon decided that the
little girl should for the time being take up her residence under the
Roff roof.

She removed there February 11, and on the way an event occurred that
vastly strengthened belief in the reality of her claims. The Vennums and
the Roffs lived at opposite ends of Watseka; but the latter family, at
the time of Mary's death in 1865, had been occupying a dwelling in a
central section of the town. Arrived at this house, Lurancy
unhesitatingly turned to enter it, and seemed much astonished when told
that her home was elsewhere. "Why," said she, in a positive tone, "I
know that I live here." It was indeed with some difficulty that she was
persuaded to continue her journey; but once at its end all signs of
disappointment vanished and she passed gaily from room to room,
identifying objects which she had never seen before but which had been
well-known to Mary Roff. Her pseudo-parents were in ecstacies of joy.
"Truly," they said to each other, "our daughter who was dead