walked apart from the young lady, bending towards her with an air of devotion.  Mr. King stood one side and watched the endless procession up and down, up and down, the strollers, the mincers, the languid, the nervous steppers; noted the eye-shots, the flashing or the languishing look that kills, and never can be called to account for the mischief it does; but not a sound did he hear of the repartee and the laughter.  The place certainly was thronged.  The avenue in front was crowded with vehicles of all sorts; there were groups strolling on the broad beach-children with their tiny pails and shovels digging pits close to the advancing tide, nursery-maids in fast colors, boys in knickerbockers racing on the beach, people lying on the sand, resolute walkers, whose figures loomed tall in the evening light, doing their constitutional.  People were passing to and fro on the long iron pier that spider-legged itself out into the sea; the two rooms midway were filled with sitters taking the evening breeze; and the large ball and music room at the end, with its spacious outside promenade-yes, there were dancers there, and the band was playing.  Mr. King could see the fiddlers draw their bows, and the corneters lift up their horns and get red in the face, and the lean man slide his trombone, and the drummer flourish his sticks, but not a note of music reached him.  It might have been a performance of ghosts for all the effect at this distance.  Mr. King remarked upon this dumb-show to a gentleman in a blue coat and white vest and gray hat, leaning against a column near him.  The gentleman made no response.  It was most singular.  Mr. King stepped back to be out of the way of some children racing down the piazza, and, half stumbling, sat down in the lap of a dowager—­no, not quite; the chair was empty, and he sat down in the fresh varnish, to which his clothes stuck fast.  Was this a delusion?  No.  The tables were filled in the dining-room, the waiters were scurrying about, there were ladies on the balconies looking dreamily down upon the animated scene below; all the movements of gayety and hilarity in the height of a season.  Mr. King approached a group who were standing waiting for a carriage, but they did not see him, and did not respond to his trumped-up question about the next train.  Were these, then, shadows, or was he a spirit himself?  Were these empty omnibuses and carriages that discharged ghostly passengers?  And all this promenading and flirting and languishing and love-making, would it come to nothing-nothing more than usual?  There was a charm about it all—­the movement, the color, the gray sand, and the rosy blush on the sea—­a lovely place, an enchanted place.  Were these throngs the guests that were to come, or those that had been herein other seasons?  Why could not the former “materialize” as well as the latter?  Is it not as easy to make nothing out of what never yet existed as out of what has ceased to exist?  The landlord, by faith,