“My goodness!” gasped Mrs. Townsend.  Her face assumed a strange gathering of wrath in the midst of her terror.  Suddenly she made a determined move forward, although her husband strove to hold her back.

“You let me be,” said she.  She moved forward.  Then she recoiled and gave a loud shriek.  “The wet sheet flapped in my face,” she cried.  “Take me away, take me away!” Then she fainted.  Between them they got her back to the house.  “It was awful,” she moaned when she came to herself, with the family all around her where she lay on the dining-room floor.  “Oh, David, what do you suppose it is?”

“Nothing at all,” replied David Townsend stoutly.  He was remarkable for courage and staunch belief in actualities.  He was now denying to himself that he had seen anything unusual.

“Oh, there was,” moaned his wife.

“I saw something,” said George, in a sullen, boyish bass.

The maid sobbed convulsively and so did Adrianna for sympathy.

“We won’t talk any about it,” said David.  “Here, Jane, you drink this hot tea—­it will do you good; and Cordelia, you hang out the clothes in our own yard.  George, you go and put up the line for her.”

“The line is out there,” said George, with a jerk of his shoulder.

“Are you afraid?”

“No, I ain’t,” replied the boy resentfully, and went out with a pale face.

After that Cordelia hung the Townsend wash in the yard of their own house, standing always with her back to the vacant lot.  As for David Townsend, he spent a good deal of his time in the lot watching the shadows, but he came to no explanation, although he strove to satisfy himself with many.

“I guess the shadows come from the smoke from our chimneys, or else the poplar tree,” he said.

“Why do the shadows come on Monday mornings, and no other?” demanded his wife.

David was silent.

Very soon new mysteries arose.  One day Cordelia rang the dinner-bell at their usual dinner hour, the same as in Townsend Centre, high noon, and the family assembled.  With amazement Adrianna looked at the dishes on the table.

“Why, that’s queer!” she said.

“What’s queer?” asked her mother.

Cordelia stopped short as she was about setting a tumbler of water beside a plate, and the water slopped over.

“Why,” said Adrianna, her face paling, “I—­thought there was boiled dinner.  I—­smelt cabbage cooking.”

“I knew there would something else come up,” gasped Cordelia, leaning hard on the back of Adrianna’s chair.

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Townsend sharply, but her own face began to assume the shocked pallour which it was so easy nowadays for all their faces to assume at the merest suggestion of anything out of the common.

“I smelt cabbage cooking all the morning up in my room,” Adrianna said faintly, “and here’s codfish and potatoes for dinner.”