work of the solitary
visitor. There was room for doubt, for there were visitors who might
well have travelled to all the places mentioned, and resided long enough
on the shores of the waters the writer spoke of to have had all the
experiences mentioned in the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady,
a former schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families common
in this generation, the heads of which, especially the female heads, can
never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and Europe,
like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment, alternately
attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium. Every few years
they pull their families up by the roots, and by the time they have begun
to take hold a little with their radicles in the spots to which they have
been successively transplanted up they come again, so that they never get
a tap-root anywhere. The Terror suspected the daughter of one of these
families of sending certain anonymous articles of not dissimilar
character to the one she had just received. But she knew the style of
composition common among the young girls, and she could hardly believe
that it was one of them who had sent this paper. Could a brother of this
young lady have written it? Possibly; she knew nothing more than that
the young lady had a brother, then a student at the University. All the
chances were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was the author. So thought
Lurida, and so thought Dr. Butts.

Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both. There
was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part
of the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to
suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and
did not look to any practical purpose in that direction. Besides, if the
stranger were the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a
sheet of water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in
case he seriously meditated taking unceremonious leave of life and its
accidents. He could find a river easily enough, to say nothing of other
methods of effecting his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the
impropriety of selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the
white canoe and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of
the deep waters.

The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before the
public if he had not counted among