gether--he and her beloved old Katie--Were conducting her
to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's
side once more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.

He did not come down to dinner, and when I went up afterward I found him
curiously agitated. He said:

"For one who does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar
experience. I went into the bath-room just now and closed the door. You
know how warm it always is in there, and there are no draughts. All at
once I felt a cold current of air about me. I thought the door must be
open; but it was closed. I said, 'Jean, is this you trying to let me
know you have found the others?' Then the cold air was gone."

I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon him; but I
don't remember that he ever mentioned it afterward.

Next day the storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop
was a raging, driving mass of white. He wrote most of the day, but
stopped now and then to read some of the telegrams or letters of
condolence which came flooding in. Sometimes he walked over to the
window to look out on the furious tempest. Once, during the afternoon,
he said:

"Jean always so loved to see a storm like this, and just now at Elmira
they are burying her."

Later he read aloud some lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had
sent him lines which he had remembered in the sorrow for Susy:

When last came sorrow, around barn and byre
Wind-careen snow, the year's white sepulchre, lay.
"Come in," I said, "and warm you by the fire";
And there she sits and never goes away.

It was that evening that he came into the room where Mrs. Paine and I
sat by the fire, bringing his manuscript.

"I have finished my story of Jean's death," he said. "It is the end of
my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't judge it myself
at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know what you
think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published."

It was, in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing
in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect
thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of
his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he
should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph
which he omitted may be printed now:

December 27. Did I know jean's value? No,