water to
heat, took up the child and went out, leaving them alone together, and
they heard her footsteps in the room above as she went back and forth,
getting what she needed.

The White Sleep of Auber Hurn

BY RICHARD RICE

The thing happened in America; that is one reason for believing it.
Another land would absorb it, or at least give a background to shadow
over its likelihood, the scenery and atmosphere to lend an evanescent
credibility, changing it in time to a mere legend, a tale told out of
the hazy distance. But in America it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in
all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly
rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts,
till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,--witnessed at high
noon, and in New Jersey of all places, flat, unillusive, and American.

The thing was as clear a fact in its unsubtle, shadowless mystery as was
he--that is, as was the shell and husk of him lying there in the next
room after I had watched the life and the person drawn out, leaving only
mere barren lees to show what had gone. Hours it lay there to prove the
thing, to settle it in my mind, to let me believe eternally in it. Then
we buried it deep under the big pile of scree on my hill. As I write I
can see the white stones from the window.

It is not all guesswork to begin with; indeed it is not guesswork at any
moment if the end is always in view, and we had to begin with the end. I
tell you it was as plain as daylight. People saw him, heard him talk;
saw him get off the train at Newark to mail my letter--this
one--addressed to my engineers in Trenton; heard him say, "Promised
Crenshaw to post this before reaching the city; guess this is my last
chance to keep it." It is a little thing that counts; you can't get by
that; it alone is final; but there were a dozen more. Ezekiel saw him on
the platform hunting for the right box for west-bound mail, and saw him
post the letter after considerable trouble. When I heard that, I yielded
to the incredulous so far as to telephone to Trenton, asking if the firm
had received it. I did that, though I held the letter in my hand at the
time, and knew it had never left this house. Ezekiel was sure that he
mailed the letter, that it went from his hand into the box. He was
watching carefully because just then the train began to move; but
Auber, leisurely ignoring this, appeared to be comparing his watch