rom my
childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours
rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of
night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a
helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of
caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I think,
but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe he loved me better
than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and trouble in
teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten. Perhaps it
was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I had no nursery
governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.

I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes twice a
day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool near her
feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I wanted to
do. I daresay she saw already the seeds of a profound melancholy in my
nature, for she looked at me always with a sad smile, and kissed me with
a sigh when I was taken away.

One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the nursery.
The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was sitting sewing in
the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say in a strange voice,
"One--two--one--two!" I was frightened, and I jumped up and ran to the
door, barefooted as I was.

"What is it, Judith?" I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can remember
the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered.

"One--two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!" she crooned, working
herself in her chair. "One--two--a light coffin and a heavy coffin,
falling to the floor!"

Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and sang me to
sleep with a queer old Welsh song.

I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that she had
meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon. They died
in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It was a great
room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any: and when the days
were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house. My mother grew
rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part of the building to
make place for her. They thought my nursery was gayer for her, I
suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful when she was dead,
and I cried bitterly.

"The light one, the light one--the heavy one to come," crooned the
Welshwoman. And she was