With the extension of our business, and the increasing calls upon my time during my Western journeys, it was three years before I again found myself in Toledo, with sufficient leisure to repeat my visit.  I had some difficulty in finding the little frame house; for, although it was unaltered in every respect, a number of stately brick “villas” had sprung up around it and quite disguised the locality.  The door was opened by the same little black-eyed woman, with the addition of four artificial teeth, which were altogether too large and loose.  They were attached by plated hooks to her eye-teeth, and moved up and down when she spoke.

“Is Rachel Emmons at home?” I asked.

The woman stared at me in evident surprise.

“She’s dead,” said she, at last, and then added,—­“let’s see,—­ain’t you the gentleman that called here, some three or four years ago?”

“Yes”, said I, entering the room; “I should like to hear about her death.”

“Well,—­’twas rather queer.  She was failin’ when you was here.  After that she got softer and weaker-like, an’ didn’t have her deathlike wearin’ sleeps so often, but she went just as fast for all that.  The doctor said ’twas heart-disease, and the nerves was gone, too; so he only giv’ her morphy, and sometimes pills, but he knowed she’d no chance from the first.  ’Twas a year ago last May when she died.  She’d been confined to her bed about a week, but I’d no thought of her goin’ so soon.  I was settin’ up with her, and ’twas a little past midnight, maybe.  She’d been layin’ like dead awhile, an’ I was thinkin’ I could snatch a nap before she woke.  All’t onst she riz right up in bed, with her eyes wide open, an’ her face lookin’ real happy, an’ called out, loud and strong,—­’Farewell, Eber Nicholson! farewell!  I’ve come for the last time!  There’s peace for me in heaven, an’ peace for you on earth!  Farewell! farewell!’ Then she dropped back on the piller, stone-dead.  She’d expected it, ’t seems, and got the doctor to write her will.  She left me this house and lot,—­I’m her second cousin on the mother’s side,—­but all her money in the Savin’s Bank, six hundred and seventy-nine dollars and a half, to Eber Nicholson.  The doctor writ out to Illinois, an’ found he’d gone to Kansas, a year before.  So the money’s in bank yit; but I s’pose he’ll git it, some time or other.”

As I returned to the hotel, conscious of a melancholy pleasure at the news of her death, I could not help wondering,—­“Did he hear that last farewell, far away in his Kansas cabin?  Did he hear it, and fall asleep with thanksgiving in his heart, and arise in the morning to a liberated life?” I have never visited Kansas, nor have I ever heard from him since; but I know that the living ghost which haunted him is laid forever.

Reader, you will not believe my story:  BUT IT IS TRUE.

* * * * *

  RHOTRUDA.