riously ill.

This brought me back at once,--sailing down from Providence in an open
boat, I remember, one lovely moonlight night. Next day I saw Severance,
who declared that he had suffered from nothing worse than a prolonged
sick-headache. I soon got out of him all that had happened. He had seen
the figure in the window every sunny day, he said. Of course he had, if
he chose to look for it, and I could only smile, though it perhaps
seemed unkind. But I stopped smiling when he went on to tell that, not
satisfied with these observations, he had visited the house by
moonlight also, and had then seen, as he averred, a second figure
standing beside the first.

Of course, there was no defence against such a theory as this, except
simply to laugh it down; but it made me very anxious, for it showed
that he was growing thoroughly morbid. "Either it was pure fancy," I
said, "or it was Paul the gardener."

But here he was prepared for me. It seemed that, on seeing the two
figures, Severance had at once left the piazza, and, with an instinct
of common-sense that was surprising, had crossed the garden, scaled the
wall, and looked in at the window of Paul's little cottage, where the
man and his wife were quietly seated at supper, probably after a late
fishing-trip. "There was another reason," he said; but here he stopped,
and would give no description of the second figure, which he had,
however, seen twice again, always by moon-light. He consented to let me
accompany him the following night.

We accordingly went. It was a calm, clear night, and the moon lay
brightly on the bay. The distant shores looked low and filmy; a naval
vessel was in the harbor, and there was a ball on board, with music and
fire-works; some fishermen were singing in their boats, late as was the
hour. Severance was absorbed in his own gloomy reveries; and when we
had crossed the wall, the world seemed left outside, and the glamour of
the place began to creep over me also. I seemed to see my companion
relapsing into some phantom realm, beyond power of withdrawal. I
talked, sang, whistled; but it was all a rather hollow effort, and soon
ceased. The great house looked gloomy and impenetrable, the moonlight
appeared sick and sad, the birch-boughs rustled in a dreary way. We
went up the steps in no jubilant mood.

I crossed the piazza at once, looked in at the farthest window, and saw
there my own image, though far more faintly than in the sunlight.
Severance