exalted nervous conditions. The
study of the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history
of the persons they represented, and the consciousness of instincts
inherited in all probability from these 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 whi