logical sequence of
propositions which had kept his large forehead knotty for a week.

At eight years old she fell in love with the high-colored picture of
Major Gideon Withers in the crimson sash and the red feather of his
exalted military office. It was then for the first time that her aunt
Silence remarked a shade of resemblance between the child and the
portrait. She had always, up to this time, been dressed in sad colors,
as was fitting, doubtless, for a forlorn orphan; but happening one day to
see a small negro girl peacocking round in a flaming scarlet petticoat,
she struck for bright colors in her own apparel, and carried her point at
last. It was as if a ground-sparrow had changed her gray feathers for
the burning plumage of some tropical wanderer; and it was natural enough
that Cyprian Eveleth should have called her the fire-hang-bird, and her
little chamber the fire-hang-bird's nest,--using the country boy's
synonyme for the Baltimore oriole.

At ten years old she had one of those great experiences which give new
meaning to the life of a child.

Her uncle Malachi had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one time,
but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under their
influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an extravagance.
He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more and more
negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering about
the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being seen
flitting from window to window, the story got about that the old house
was haunted.

One dreary, rainy Friday in November, Myrtle was left alone in the house.
Her uncle had been gone since the day before. The two women were both
away at the village. At such times the child took a strange delight in
exploring all the hiding-places of the old mansion. She had the
mysterious dwelling-place of so many of the dead and the living all to
herself. What a fearful kind of pleasure in its silence and loneliness!
The old clock that Marmaduke Storr made in London more than a hundred
years ago was clicking the steady pulse-beats of its second century. The
featured moon on its dial had lifted one eye, as if to watch the child,
as it had watched so many generations of children, while the swinging
pendulum ticked them along into youth, maturity, gray hairs,
deathbeds,--ticking through the prayer at the funeral, ticking without
grief through all the still o