After he had gone Mrs. Brigham said to Caroline that after all Henry had not said that he was going to consult with Doctor Mitford, and she thought it very strange.

“Everything is very strange,” said Rebecca with a shudder.

“What do you mean?” inquired Caroline sharply.

“Nothing,” replied Rebecca.

Nobody entered the library that day, nor the next, nor the next.  The third day Henry was expected home, but he did not arrive and the last train from the city had come.

“I call it pretty queer work,” said Mrs. Brigham.  “The idea of a doctor leaving his patients for three days anyhow, at such a time as this, and I know he has some very sick ones; he said so.  And the idea of a consultation lasting three days!  There is no sense in it, and now he has not come.  I don’t understand it, for my part.”

“I don’t either,” said Rebecca.

They were all in the south parlour.  There was no light in the study opposite, and the door was ajar.

Presently Mrs. Brigham rose—­she could not have told why; something seemed to impel her, some will outside her own.  She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door of the study.

“She has not got any lamp,” said Rebecca in a shaking voice.

Caroline, who was writing letters, rose again, took a lamp (there were two in the room) and followed her sister.  Rebecca had risen, but she stood trembling, not venturing to follow.

The doorbell rang, but the others did not hear it; it was on the south door on the other side of the house from the study.  Rebecca, after hesitating until the bell rang the second time, went to the door; she remembered that the servant was out.

Caroline and her sister Emma entered the study.  Caroline set the lamp on the table.  They looked at the wall.  “Oh, my God,” gasped Mrs. Brigham, “there are—­there are two—­shadows.”  The sisters stood clutching each other, staring at the awful things on the wall.  Then Rebecca came in, staggering, with a telegram in her hand.  “Here is—­a telegram,” she gasped.  “Henry is—­dead.”

LUELLA MILLER

Close to the village street stood the one-story house in which Luella Miller, who had an evil name in the village, had dwelt.  She had been dead for years, yet there were those in the village who, in spite of the clearer light which comes on a vantage-point from a long-past danger, half believed in the tale which they had heard from their childhood.  In their hearts, although they scarcely would have owned it, was a survival of the wild horror and frenzied fear of their ancestors who had dwelt in the same age with Luella Miller.  Young people even would stare with a shudder at the old house as they passed, and children never played around it as was their wont