uman affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt
in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone. My small
adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience. I
had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies
by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains. Fate would
not so be pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth
and cowardly indolence.

One February night--I remember it well--there came a voice near Miss
Marchmont's house, heard by every inmate, but translated, perhaps, only
by one. After a calm winter, storms were ushering in the spring. I had
put Miss Marchmont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The wind was
wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened,
it took a new tone--an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the
ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in every
gust.

"Oh, hush! hush!" I said in my disturbed mind, dropping my work, and
making a vain effort to stop my ears against that subtle, searching
cry. I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory observation
had forced on me a theory as to what it boded. Three times in the
course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in
the storm--this restless, hopeless cry--denote a coming state of the
atmosphere unpropitious to life. Epidemic diseases, I believed, were
often heralded by a gasping, sobbing, tormented, long-lamenting east
wind. Hence, I inferred, arose the legend of the Banshee. I fancied,
too, I had noticed--but was not philosopher enough to know whether
there was any connection between the circumstances--that we often at
the same time hear of disturbed volcanic action in distant parts of the
world; of rivers suddenly rushing above their banks; and of strange
high tides flowing furiously in on low sea-coasts. "Our globe," I had
said to myself, "seems at such periods torn and disordered; the feeble
amongst us wither in her distempered breath, rushing hot from steaming
volcanoes."

I listened and trembled; Miss Marchmont slept.

About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The
fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air
change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and
saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.

Turning away, the object that met my eyes was Miss Marchmont awake,
lifting her h