and
faces. Then the torch lied out, and our old guide, pointing through an
archway with the blackened stump of it, said:

"'Twas here they kept them indeed, yes!"

We saw before us a sort of vault, stone-built, and low, and long. The
light there was too dim for us to make out anything but walls and heaps
of rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering own. But trying to
pierce that darkness we became conscious, as it seemed, of innumerable
eyes gazing, not at us, but through the archway where we stood;
innumerable white eyeballs gleaming out of blackness. From behind us
came a little laugh. It floated past through the archway, toward those
eyes. Who was that? Who laughed in there? The old South itself--that
incredible, fine, lost soul! That "old-time" thing of old ideals,
blindfolded by its own history! That queer proud blend of simple
chivalry and tyranny, of piety and the abhorrent thing! Who was it
laughed there in the old slave-market--laughed at these white eyeballs
glaring from out of the blackness of their dark cattle-pen? What poor
departed soul in this House of Melancholy? But there was no ghost when
we turned to look--only our old guide with her sweet smile.

"Yes, suh. Here they all came--'twas the finest hotel--before the
war-time; old Southern families--buyin' an' sellin' their property. Yes,
ma'am, very interesting! This way! And here were the bells to all the
rooms. Broken, you see--all broken!"

And rather quickly we passed away, out of that "old-time place"; where
something had laughed, and the drip, drip, drip of water down the walls
was as the sound of a spirit grieving.
1912.

ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS

On that New Year's morning when I drew up the blind it was still nearly
dark, but for the faintest pink flush glancing out there on the horizon
of black water. The far shore of the river's mouth was just soft dusk;
and the dim trees below me were in perfect stillness. There was no lap of
water. And then--I saw her, drifting in on the tide-the little ship,
passaging below me, a happy ghost. Like no thing of this world she came,
ending her flight, with sail-wings closing and her glowing lantern eyes.
There was I know not what of stealthy joy about her thus creeping in to
the unexpecting land. And I wished she would never pass, but go on
gliding by down there for ever with her dark ropes, and her bright
lanterns, and her mysterious felicity, so that I might have for ev