forgave her for having forgotten me. My thoughts of her and of
others were the forbearing thoughts of a man whose mind was
withdrawn already from the world, whose views were narrowing fast
to the one idea of his own death.

I grew weary of walking up and down. The loneliness of the place
began to oppress me. The sense of my own indecision irritated my
nerves. After a long look at the lake through the trees, I came
to a positive conclusion at last. I determined to try if a good
swimmer could drown himself.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A VISION OF THE NIGHT.

RETURNING to the cottage parlor, I took a chair by the window and
opened my pocket-book at a blank page. I had certain directions
to give to my representatives, which might spare them some
trouble and uncertainty in the event of my death. Disguising my
last instructions under the commonplace heading of "Memoranda on
my return to London," I began to write.

I had filled one page of the pocket-book, and had just turned to
the next, when I became conscious of a difficulty in fixing my
attention on the subject that was before it. I was at once
reminded of the similar difficulty which I felt in Shetland, when
I had tried vainly to arrange the composition of the letter to my
mother which Miss Dunross was to write. By way of completing the
parallel, my thoughts wandered now, as they had wandered then, to
my latest remembrance of Mrs. Van Brandt. In a minute or two I
began to feel once more the strange physical sensations which I
had first experienced in the garden at Mr. Dunross's house. The
same mysterious trembling shuddered through me from head to foot.
I looked about me again, with no distinct consciousness of what
the objects were on which my eyes rested. My nerves trembled, on
that lovely summer night, as if there had been an electric
disturbance in the atmosphere and a storm coming. I laid my
pocket-book and pencil on the table, and rose to go out again
under the trees. Even the trifling effort to cross the room was
an effort made in vain. I stood rooted to the spot, with my face
turned toward the moonlight streaming in at the open door.

An interval passed, and as I still looked out through the door, I
became aware of something moving far down among the trees that
fringed the shore of the lake. The first impression produced on
me was of two gray shadows winding their way slowly toward me
between the trunks of the trees. By fine degrees the shadows
assumed a more and more marked outline, until they presented
themselves in the likeness of two robed figures, one taller than
the other. While they glided nearer and nearer, their gray
obscurity of hue melted away. They brightened softly with an
inner light of their own as they slowly approached the open space
before the door. For the third time I stood in the ghostly
presence of Mrs. Van Brandt; and with her, holding her hand, I
beheld a second apparition never before revealed to me, the
apparition of her child.

Hand-in-hand, shining in their unearthly brightness through the
bright moonlight itself, the two stood before me. The mother's
face looked at me once more with the sorrowful and pleading eyes
which I remembered so well. But the face of the child was
innocently radiant with an angelic smile. I waited in unutterable
expectation for the word that was to be spoken, for the movement
that was to come. The movement came first. The child released its
hold on the mother's hand, and floating slowly upward, remained
poised in midair--a softly glowing presence shining out of the
dark background of the trees. The mother glided into the room,
and stopped at the table on which I had laid my pocket-book and
pencil when I could no longer write. As before, she took the
pencil and wrote on the blank page. As before, she beckoned to me
to step nearer to her. I approached her outstretched hand, and
felt once more the mysterious rapture of her touch on my bosom,
and heard once more her low, melodious tones repeating the words:
"Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped from my bosom. The
pale light which revealed her to me quivered, sunk, vanished. She
had spoken. She had gone.

I drew to me the open pocket-book. And this time I saw, in the
writing of the ghostly hand, these words only:

_"Follow the Child."_

I looked out again at the lonely night landscape.

There, in mid-air, shining softly out of the dark background of
the trees, still hovered the starry apparition of the child.

Advancing without conscious will of my own, I crossed the
threshold of the door. The softly glowing vision of the child
moved away before me among the trees. I followed, like a man
spellbound. The apparition, floating slowly onward, led me out of
the wood, and past my old home, back to the lonely by-road along
which I had walked from the market-town to the house. From time
to time, as we two went on our way, the bright figure of the
child paused, hovering low in the cloudless sky. Its radiant face
looked down smiling on me; it beckoned with its little hand, and
floated on again, leading me as the Star led the Eastern sages in
the olden time.

I reached the town. The airy figure of the child paused, hovering


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