pace, gazing into the glowing fire in a
quest of the bygones. Then, with a sigh, he resumed his story.

"I remember one spring evening I met him on the sand-hills. He looked
sorter uplifted--jest like you did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought
Mistress Blythe in tonight. I thought of him the minute I seen you.
And he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that she was
coming out to him. I wasn't more'n half pleased, ornery young lump of
selfishness that I was; I thought he wouldn't be as much my friend
after she came. But I'd enough decency not to let him see it. He told
me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh, and she would have come
out with him if it hadn't been for her old uncle. He was sick, and
he'd looked after her when her parents died and she wouldn't leave him.
And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry John Selwyn.
'Twasn't no easy journey for a woman in them days. There weren't no
steamers, you must ricollect.

"'When do you expect her?' says I.

"'She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,' says he, 'and so
she should be here by mid-July. I must set Carpenter Johnson to
building me a home for her. Her letter come today. I know before I
opened it that it had good news for me. I saw her a few nights ago.'

"I didn't understand him, and then he explained--though I didn't
understand THAT much better. He said he had a gift--or a curse. Them
was his words, Mistress Blythe--a gift or a curse. He didn't know
which it was. He said a great-great-grandmother of his had had it, and
they burned her for a witch on account of it. He said queer
spells--trances, I think was the name he give 'em--come over him now
and again. Are there such things, Doctor?"

"There are people who are certainly subject to trances," answered
Gilbert. "The matter is more in the line of psychical research than
medical. What were the trances of this John Selwyn like?"

"Like dreams," said the old Doctor skeptically.

"He said he could see things in them," said Captain Jim slowly.

"Mind you, I'm telling you jest what HE said--things that were
happening--things that were GOING to happen. He said they were
sometimes a comfort to him and sometimes a horror. Four nights before
this he'd been in one--went into it while he was sitting looking at the
fire. And he saw an old room he knew well in England, and Persis Leigh
in it, holding out her hands to him and looking glad and happy. So he
knew he w