my name at the Island
House, Toledo.

After wandering about for an hour or two, the next morning, I
finally discovered the residence of Rachel Emmons. It was a small
story-and-a-half frame building, on the western edge of the town, with a
locust-tree in front, two lilacs inside the paling, and a wilderness of
cabbage-stalks and currant-bushes in the rear. After much cogitation, I
had not been able to decide upon any plan of action, and the interval
between my knock and the opening of the door was one of considerable
embarrassment to me. A small, plumpish woman of forty, with peaked nose,
black eyes, and but two upper teeth, confronted me. She, certainly, was
not the one I sought.

"Is your name Rachel Emmons?" I asked, nevertheless.

"No, I'm not her. This is her house, though."

"Will you tell her a gentleman wants to see her?" said I, putting my
foot inside the door as I spoke. The room, I saw, was plainly, but
neatly furnished. A rag-carpet covered the floor; green rush-bottomed
chairs, a settee with chintz cover, and a straight-backed rocking-chair
were distributed around the walls; and for ornament there was an
alphabetical sampler in a frame, over the low wooden mantel-piece.

The woman, however, still held the door-knob in her hand, saying, "Miss
Emmons is busy. She can't well leave her work. Did you want some sewin'
done?"

"No," said I; "I wish to speak with her. It's on private and particular
business."

"Well," she answered with some hesitation, "I'll _tell_ her. Take a
cheer."

She disappeared through a door into a back room, and I sat down. In
another minute the door noiselessly reopened, and Rachel Emmons came
softly into the room. I believe I should have known her anywhere. Though
from Eber Nicholson's narrative she could not have been much over
thirty, she appeared to be at least forty-five. Her hair was streaked
with gray, her face thin and of an unnatural waxy pallor, her lips of a
whitish-blue color and tightly pressed together, and her eyes, seemingly
sunken far back in their orbits, burned with a strange, ghastly--I had
almost said phosphorescent--light. I remember thinking they must shine
like touch-wood in the dark. I have come in contact with too many
persons, passed through too wide a range of experience, to lose my
self-possession easily; but I could not meet the cold, steady gaze of
those eyes without a strong internal trepidation. It would have been the
same, if I had known nothing