ice.

High above it, from the steep slope on either hand, beetling crags jut
out. Their summits almost meet at one point, and thus the space below
bears a rude resemblance to a huge window. Through it you might see the
blue heights in the distance; or watch the clouds and sunshine shift
over the sombre mountain across the narrow valley; or mark, after the
day has faded, how the great Scorpio draws its shining curves along the
dark sky.

One night Jonas Creyshaw sat alone in the porch of his log cabin, hard
by on the slope of the ravine, smoking his pipe and gazing meditatively
at "Old Daddy's Window." The moon was full, and its rays fell aslant on
one of the cliffs, while the rugged face of the opposite crag was in the
shadow.

Suddenly he became aware that something was moving about the precipice,
the brink of which seems the sill of the window. Although this precipice
is sheer and insurmountable, a dark figure had risen from it, and stood
plainly defined against the cliff, which presented a comparatively
smooth surface to the brilliant moonlight.

Was it a shadow? he asked himself hastily.

His eyes swept the ravine, only thirty feet wide at that point, which
lies between the two crags whose jutting summits almost meet above it to
form Old Daddy's Window.

There was no one visible to cast a shadow.

It seemed as if the figure had unaccountably emerged from the sheer
depths below.

Only for a moment it stood motionless against the cliff. Then it flung
its arms wildly above its head, and with a nimble spring
disappeared--upward.

Jonas Creyshaw watched it, his eyes distended, his face pallid, his pipe
trembling in his shaking hand.

"Mirandy!" he quavered faintly.

His wife, a thin, ailing woman with pinched features and an uncertain
eye, came to the door.

"Thar," he faltered, pointing with his pipe-stem--"jes' a minit ago--I
seen it!--a ghost riz up over the bluff inter Old Daddy's Window!"

The woman fell instantly into a panic.

"'Twarn't a-beckonin', war it? 'Twarn't a-beckonin'? 'Kase ef it war,
ye'll hev ter die right straight! That air a sure sign."

A little of Jonas Creyshaw's pluck and common sense came back to him at
this unpleasant announcement.

"Not on _his_ say-so," he stoutly averred. "I ain't a-goin' ter do the
beck nor the bid of enny onmannerly harnt ez hev tuk up the notion ter
riz up over the bluff inter Old Daddy's Window, an' sot hisself ter
motionin' ter me."

He rose has