This was all the explanation she could give.  It was evidently one of those mysterious cases of spiritual disease which completely baffle our reason.  Although compelled to accept her statement, I felt incapable of suggesting any remedy.  I could only hope that the abnormal condition into which she had fallen might speedily wear out her vital energies, already seriously shattered.  She informed me, further, that each attack was succeeded by great exhaustion, and that she felt herself growing feebler, from year to year.  The immediate result, I suspected, was a disease of the heart, which might give her the blessing of death sooner than she hoped.  Before taking leave of her, I succeeded in procuring from her a promise that she would write to Eber Nicholson, giving him that free forgiveness which would at least ease his conscience, and make his burden somewhat lighter to bear.  Then, feeling that it was not in my power to do more, I rose to depart.  Taking her hand, which lay cold and passive in mine,—­so much like a dead hand that it required a strong effort in me to repress a nervous shudder,—­I said, “Farewell, Rachel Emmons, and remember that they who seek peace in the right spirit will always find it at last.”

“It won’t be many years before I find it”, she replied, calmly; and the weird, supernatural light of her eyes shone upon me for the last time.

I reached New York in due time, and did not fail, sitting around the broiled oysters and celery, with my partners, to repeat the story of the Haunted Shanty.  I knew, beforehand, how they would receive it; but the circumstances had taken such hold of my mind,—­so burned me, like a boy’s money, to keep buttoned up in the pocket,—­that I could no more help telling the tale than the man I remember reading about, a great while ago, in a poem called “The Ancient Mariner”.  Beeson, who, I suspect, don’t believe much of anything, is always apt to carry his raillery too far; and thenceforth, whenever the drum of a target-company, marching down Broadway, passed the head of our street, he would whisper to me, “There comes Rachel Emmons!” until I finally became angry, and insisted that the subject should never again be mentioned.

But I none the less recalled it to my mind, from time to time, with a singular interest.  It was the one supernatural, or, at least, inexplicable experience of my life, and I continued to feel a profound curiosity with regard to the two principal characters.  My slight endeavor to assist them by such counsel as had suggested itself to me was actuated by the purest human sympathy, and upon further reflection I could discover no other means of help.  A spiritual disease could be cured only by spiritual medicine,—­unless, indeed, the secret of Rachel Emmons’s mysterious condition lay in some permanent dislocation of the relation between soul and body, which could terminate only with their final separation.