ge tales when I was a child."

"No need of witchcraft in this case," said Margaret, smiling. "Grace is
as active as a cat, and her special delight is to climb up and down
walls. There is a grape-vine under this window, isn't there? That would
be quite enough for the Goat, as they called her at school."

"That isn't all," said Mrs. Peyton. "She's not right, I tell you; not
canny, as Nurse used to say. You may laugh, Margaret Montfort. I tell
you, lying here year after year, one gets to thinking all kinds of
things. I could tell you--who knows the old woman was not right after
all?--listen to this. Yesterday, this very yesterday, she was standing
there by the mantel-piece, talking as quietly as we are talking now.
Suddenly, without a word, down she falls in a swoon, or trance, or
something unearthly. I had let the maids go out; we two were alone in
the house. There she lay, and I thought she was dead. I got up again! No
one knows what it cost me, Margaret. I have forgotten how to walk; I
merely dragged myself across to where she lay. She was breathing; I
could not see that she was paler than usual--she never has any color,
you know. I called and screamed; I raved and wept, I believe; you cannot
fancy how terrible it was, that living, breathing form, lying there, the
lips almost smiling, but no sign, no twitching of an eyelid, only the
beating of the heart, to tell me that she was not dead. Hush! do you
know the story of Christy Moran? My nurse's grandmother used to know
her. She was--I don't know what she was--but she used to do this very
thing. They would find her sitting in her chair, breathing, but without
speech or motion, and afterward they would hear of some devilish act or
other, committed at that very hour, in some distant town or village, by
a figure wearing her likeness. Don't laugh! don't laugh! I tell you, we
don't know everything in this civilization that we talk so much about. I
tried to say a prayer, Margaret,--I used to say them regularly,--but--and
I had hardly begun before she opened her eyes and smiled at me like a
child. 'Did you ever hear of catalepsy?' she says, and she went out of
the room without another word, and left me to get back to bed as best I
could."

Margaret was silent, not knowing what to say. She had no doubt that
Grace was acting upon some theory of her own, and was playing these wild
pranks in the hope of rousing her patient to action and exercise.
Certainly, to get Mrs. Peyton out