same ancestors, formed the basis of Myrtle’s ‘Vision.’  The lives of our progenitors are, as we know, reproduced in different proportions in ourselves.  Whether they as individuals have any consciousness of it, is another matter.  It is possible that they do get a second as it were fractional life in us.  It might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle for the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that we grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two or more are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be understood, of a special personality of our own, about which these others are grouped.  Independently of any possible scientific value, this ‘Vision’ serves to illustrate the above-mentioned fact of common experience, which is not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.

“How much it may be granted to certain young persons to see, not in virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through those direct channels which worldly wisdom may possibly close to the luminous influx, each reader must determine for himself by his own standards of faith and evidence.

“One statement of the narrative admits of a simple natural explanation, which does not allow the lovers of the marvellous to class it with the quasi-miraculous appearance seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in full by Dr. Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier.  Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers must have seen for themselves.  The country people are familiar with the sight of it in wild timber-land, and have given it the name of ‘Fox-fire.’  Two trunks of trees in this state, lying across each other, will account for the fact observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl’s story without requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence outside of natural laws.”

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Clement Lindsay receives A letter, and begins his answer.

It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank, after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read.  It was written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed like a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts.  The letter was as follows: 

Oxbow village, June 13, 1859.