that since my sight was so helplessly
deceived, I should have to depend upon the touch. In no other way could
I detect the true basis of the illusion; and this way was a hard one. By
much argument and self-persuasion I prevailed upon myself to climb the
fence, and with a sort of despairing doggedness to let myself down on
the inside.

Just then the clouds thickened over the face of the moon, and the light
faded rapidly. To get down inside the fence with that thing was, for a
moment, simply sickening, and my eyes dilated with the intensity of my
stare. Then common-sense came to the rescue, with a revulsion of
feeling, and I laughed--though not very mirthfully--at the thoroughness
of my scare.

With an assumption of coolness and defiance I walked right up to the
open doors; and when so close that I could have touched it with my
walking-stick, the thing swayed gently and faced me in the light of the
re-appearing moon.

Could my eyes deceive me? It certainly was our neighbor.

Scarcely knowing what I did, I thrust out my stick and touched it,
shrinking back as I did so. What I touched, plain instantly to my sight,
was a piece of wood and iron,--some portion of a mowing-machine or
reaper, which had been, apparently, repainted and hung up across the
door-pole to dry.

It swayed in the wind. The straying fingers of the moonbeams through the
chinks pencilled it strangely, and the shadows were huddled black behind
it. But now it hung revealed, with no more likeness to a human body than
any average well-meaning farm-implement might be expected to have.

With a huge sigh of relief I turned away. As I climbed the fence once
more I gave a parting glance toward the yawning doorway of the barn on
the marsh. There, as plain as before I had pierced the bubble, swung the
body of my neighbor. And all the way home, though I would not turn my
head, I felt it at my heels.

Captain Joe and Jamie.

How the wind roared in from the sea over the Tantramar dike!

It was about sunset, and a fierce orange-red gleam, thrusting itself
through a rift in the clouds that blackened the sky, cast a strange glow
over the wide, desolate marshes. A mile back rose the dark line of the
uplands, with small, white farmhouses already hidden in shadow.

Captain Joe Boultbee had just left his wagon standing in the dike road,
with his four-year-old boy on the seat. He was on the point of crossing
the dike, to visit the little landing-place where