She started erect.

you

"You. Every minute live now with Laban you live in sin. Your first husband, that was dead, is alive. He can't claim you unless you allow it; but neither can your second husband now. If you live on with Laban a day longer-an hour- -a minute you live in deadly sin. I thought of it all night, but I had not thought it out till this minute, when I first saw you sitting there and I knew how miserable you were, and my heart seemed to bleed at the sight of you."

"You may well say that, David," the woman answered with a certain pride in the vastness of her calamity. "If it was another woman, I could n't bear to think of it. Why does He do it? Why does He set such traps for us?"

"Nancy!" her brother called sternly. "Oh, it's easy enough for you! But if Rachel was here, she 'd see it different." "Woman," her brother said, "don't try to hide behind the dead in your sin!"

"It's no sin! I was as innocent as the babe unborn when I married Laban-as innocent as he was, poor boy, when he would have me, and we all thought he was dead. Oh, why could n't he have been. dead?"

"This is murder you have in your heart now, Nancy," the old man said, with who knows what awful pleasure in his casuistry, so pitilessly unerring. "If the life of that wicked man could buy you safety in your sin, you could wish it taken."

"Oh! oh! oh! what shall I do! what shall I do!" She wailed out the words, with her head fallen forward on her knees and her loose hair dripping over them.

"Do? Go home, and bring your little one, and come to me. I will deal with Laban when he gets back to-night."

"And let him think I've left him? And the neighbors, let them think we 've quarreled, and I could n't live with him?”

"It won't matter what the world thinks," Gillespie said, and he spoke of the small backwoods settlement as if it were some great center of opinion such as in large communities dispenses fame and infamy and makes its judgments supremely dreaded. "Besides," he faltered, "no one is knowing but ourselves to his coming back. It can seem as if he left you."

"And I live such a lie as that? Is this you, David?"

It was she who rose highest now, as literally she did, in standing on the stone where she had crouched, above the level of his footing.

"I-I say it to spare you, Nancy. I don't wish it. But I wish to make it easy -or a little bit easier-something you can bear better."

"Oh, I know, David, I know. You would save me if you could. But maybe -maybe it ain't what we think it is. Maybe he was outlawed by staying away so long."

Neither of them named Dylks, but each knew whom the other meant, throughout their talk.

"Oh, well, I must do it. I must do it. I'll go and get ready and I'll come to you. What will Jane think?"

"I'll take care of what Jane thinks. When do you expect Laban back?" "Not before sundown. I'll not come till I see him.”

"We'll be ready for you." He moved now to open the spring-house door; she turned, and was lost to him in the lights and shadows of the woods-pasture. On its farther border her cabin stood, and from it came the sound of a pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood, staying itself by the slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left it in its low cra

MANY times have I paced the relent

less street on its stones, which are harder than stone was ever meant to be, and smoother than any false welcome in the world. I have paced it at all hours and seasons, when it was shadowless in a burning sun, with the snow clouding and whitening the night. Why I started up it that early autumn morning is no matter to any one but myself; but never had I seen the avenue emptier, found it more silent. Day would not dawn yet for an hour. The sky was clear; as I went on, it grew opaque, pressing down upon the world. There was an eddying wind, which surprised one at the street corners. Since I was alone, and rather lonelier than that, my spirit sought refuge among impossible things. Even Fifth Avenue itself was not at that moment very real to me; a place for the body to tire in, that was all.

I had noticed somewhere about Fortyfourth Street, at a good height from the ground, a whirl in the air of what seemed -snow, ashes, dead leaves? Not snow, I thought, and too gray for snow, besides. Not ashes; and what would dead leaves do there? I did not stop. By the cathedral, too, there was something curious. It seemed as if large gray flakes of many shapes and sizes were being blown about and caught upon the crockets of the spires. "My eyes.are queer to-night," I said. Up against the great door there seemed to be a shadowy drift of gray, thick and fermenting. Still, I did not cross the road. I looked about, though, now for these strange things, and, heavens! when I looked the air of the avenue was full of them. They were much larger than snowflakes, and some were of the queerest shape. One saw them best when they blew up against the sky, though by peering carefully I could find them, too, gray against the gray walls, well above my head. From

every corner and crevice the gusty wind was dislodging them, and it seemed as if they clung to the walls. I looked on the ground. I thought I saw several blowing past. I thought I saw one flat and still. I went up to put my foot on it. No, that was only a little facet of the pavement that had lost the reflection of the street lights. Then I turned to go back to inspect the cathedral door.

As I turned, there, quite distinctly, in the corner of a window-sill, within my reach, was one small gray shape. Against the red stone one could n't miss it. I went closer. It was thicker than I'd fancied, and might have been almost transparent but that it was patchily covered with a sort of silvery fur not unlike the growth on an edelweiss flower. Beneath the fur it was of a rather mottled, dirty gray. There were odd markings on it that might have been made by hand. It was just about as wide at its widest as my palm and as long as a glove would be; but the shape of the shape was no shape you could name: it looked like a rag. It was indeed very ugly, and more than anything else looked like a dirty little bit of soiled gray flannel. I noticed that the thing seemed somehow to palpitate. That was queerest of all, though then I remembered the fermenting mass against St. Patrick's door. After at moment I took it gingerly in my hand. It had no weight; but by this time I was so surprised that I think I spoke aloud.

"What on earth is it?" I said.

And there seemed to come from it a sound like the echo of a scraped violin shaping into words which were:

"I am the soul of the late Mrs. Henry Brett van Goylen, and I 'll trouble you to put me down."

Politely and in some alarm I put her down, and as I did so one of the eddying gusts of wind blew the shape of her away.