been dreaming, or is your master dead?"

The two girls turned pale at this, and the elder of them went boldly
into the room which her mistress had just left. She was evidently
a young woman who had herself under good control, but she came out
sobbing, with her apron to her eyes.

"Come, come," said the man who stood beside Brenton, "haven't you had
enough of this? Come with me; you can return to this house if you wish;"
and together they passed out of the room into the crisp air of Christmas
morning. But, although Brenton knew it must be cold, he had no feeling
of either cold or warmth.

"There are a number of us," said the stranger to Brenton, "who take
turns at watching the sick-bed when a man is about to die, and when his
spirit leaves his body, we are there to explain, or comfort, or console.
Your death was so sudden that we had no warning of it. You did not feel
ill before last night, did you?"

"No," replied Brenton. "I felt perfectly well, until after dinner last
night."

"Did you leave your affairs in reasonably good order?"

"Yes," said Brenton, trying to recollect. "I think they will find
everything perfectly straight."

"Tell me a little of your history, if you do not mind," inquired the
other; "it will help me in trying to initiate you into our new order of
things here."

"Well," replied Brenton, and he wondered at himself for falling so
easily into the other's assumption that he was a dead man, "I was what
they call on the earth in reasonably good circumstances. My estate
should be worth $100,000. I had $75,000 insurance on my life, and if all
that is paid, it should net my widow not far from a couple of hundred
thousand."

"How long have you been married?" said the other.

[Illustration: A Venetian cafe.]

"Only about six months. I was married last July, and we went for a trip
abroad. We were married quietly, and left almost immediately afterwards,
so we thought, on our return, it would not be a bad plan to give a
Christmas Eve dinner, and invite some of our friends. That," he said,
hesitating a moment, "was last night. Shortly after dinner, I began to
feel rather ill, and went upstairs to rest for a while; and if what you
say is true, the first thing I knew I found myself dead."

"Alive," corrected the other.

"Well, alive, though at present I feel I belong more to the world I have
left than I do to the world I appear to be in. I must confess, although
you are a very plausible gentleman