the only trace of her.

Whither had she gone? That no mortal tongue could tell him. The darkness
had covered her flight; and when the day broke, no man could say where
the light found her.

Before leaving the house and the town forever, he gave instructions to
a friend and neighbor to sell his furniture for anything that it would
fetch, and apply the proceeds to employing the police to trace her. The
directions were honestly followed, and the money was all spent, but the
inquiries led to nothing. The picklock on the bedroom floor remained the
one last useless trace of the Dream-Woman.

At this point of the narrative the landlord paused, and, turning toward
the window of the room in which we were sitting, looked in the direction
of the stable-yard.

"So far," he said, "I tell you what was told to me. The little that
remains to be added lies within my own experience. Between two and three
months after the events I have just been relating, Isaac Scatchard came
to me, withered and old-looking before his time, just as you saw him
to-day. He had his testimonials to character with him, and he asked for
employment here. Knowing that my wife and he were distantly related, I
gave him a trial in consideration of that relationship, and liked him in
spite of his queer habits. He is as sober, honest, and willing a man as
there is in England. As for his restlessness at night, and his sleeping
away his leisure time in the day, who can wonder at it after hearing his
story? Besides, he never objects to being roused up when he's wanted, so
there's not much inconvenience to complain of, after all."

"I suppose he is afraid of a return of that dreadful dream, and of
waking out of it in the dark?" said I.

"No," returned the landlord. "The dream comes back to him so often that
he has got to bear with it by this time resignedly enough. It's his wife
keeps him waking at night as he has often told me."

"What! Has she never been heard of yet?"

"Never. Isaac himself has the one perpetual thought about her, that she
is alive and looking for him. I believe he wouldn't let himself drop
off to sleep toward two in the morning for a king's ransom. Two in the
morning, he says, is the time she will find him, one of these days. Two
in the morning is the time all the year round when he likes to be most
certain that he has got that clasp-knife safe about him. He does not
mind being alone as long as he is awake, except on the night before his
b