“Cordelia Battles, what is the matter?” cried Mrs. Townsend.  Adrianna gasped for breath and turned as white as the maid.  “What is the matter?” repeated Mrs. Townsend, but the maid was unable to speak.  Mrs. Townsend, who could be peremptory, sprang up, ran to the frightened woman and shook her violently.  “Cordelia Battles, you speak,” said she, “and not stand there staring that way, as if you were struck dumb!  What is the matter with you?”

Then Cordelia spoke in a fainting voice.

“There’s—­somebody else—­hanging out clothes—­in the vacant lot,” she gasped, and clutched at a chair for support.

“Who?” cried Mrs. Townsend, rousing to indignation, for already she had assumed a proprietorship in the vacant lot.  “Is it the folks in the next house?  I’d like to know what right they have!  We are next to that vacant lot.”

“I—­dunno—­who it is,” gasped Cordelia.  “Why, we’ve seen that girl next door go to mass every morning,” said Mrs. Townsend.  “She’s got a fiery red head.  Seems as if you might know her by this time, Cordelia.”

“It ain’t that girl,” gasped Cordelia.  Then she added in a horror-stricken voice, “I couldn’t see who ’twas.”

They all stared.

“Why couldn’t you see?” demanded her mistress.  “Are you struck blind?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why couldn’t you see?”

“All I could see was—­” Cordelia hesitated, with an expression of the utmost horror.

“Go on,” said Mrs. Townsend, impatiently.

“All I could see was the shadow of somebody, very slim, hanging out the clothes, and—­”

“What?”

“I could see the shadows of the things flappin’ on their line.”

“You couldn’t see the clothes?”

“Only the shadow on the ground.”

“What kind of clothes were they?”

“Queer,” replied Cordelia, with a shudder.

“If I didn’t know you so well, I should think you had been drinking,” said Mrs. Townsend.  “Now, Cordelia Battles, I’m going out in that vacant lot and see myself what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t go,” gasped the woman.

With that Mrs. Townsend and all the others, except Adrianna, who remained to tremble with the maid, sallied forth into the vacant lot.  They had to go out the area gate into the street to reach it.  It was nothing unusual in the way of vacant lots.  One large poplar tree, the relic of the old forest which had once flourished there, twinkled in one corner; for the rest, it was overgrown with coarse weeds and a few dusty flowers.  The Townsends stood just inside the rude board fence which divided the lot from the street and stared with wonder and horror, for Cordelia had told the truth.  They all saw what she had described—­the shadow of an exceedingly slim woman moving along the ground with up-stretched arms, the shadows of strange, nondescript garments flapping from a shadowy line, but when they looked up for the substance of the shadows nothing was to be seen except the clear, blue October air.