d the window. I could thus catch its whole
expression--an expression this time involuntary and natural as the
feelings which prompted it. The child, with his newly-obtained toy
clutched in one hand, knelt on the coverlet with his head pressed
against her breast, saying his prayers. I could hear his soft murmur,
though I could not catch the words.

But sweet as was the sight of his little white-clad form burying its
head, with its mass of dusky curls, against the breast in which he most
confided, it was not this alone which gave to the moment its almost
sacred character. It was the rapturous look with which Mrs. Carew gazed
down on this little head--the mother-look, which admits of nothing
false, and which when once seen on a woman's face, whether she be mother
in fact or mother only in heart--idealizes her in the mind for ever.

Eloquent with love and holy devotion the scene flashed upon my eyes for
a moment and was gone. But that moment made its impression, and settled
for good and all the question with which I had started upon this
adventure. She _was_ the true woman and I was the dreaming fool.

As I realized this I also realized that three days out of the seven were
gone.

XV

A PHANTASM

I certainly had every right to conclude that this would end my
adventures for the day. But I soon found that I was destined to have yet
another experience before returning to my home in New York.

The weather had changed during the last hour and at the moment I emerged
from the shadows of the hedge-row into the open space fronting the
Ocumpaugh dock, a gleam of lightning shot across the west and by it I
saw what looked like the dusky figure of a man leaning against a pile at
the extreme end of the boat-house. Something in the immobility
maintained by this figure in face of the quick flashes which from time
to time lit up the scene, reminded me of the presence I had come upon
hours before in front of Mrs. Carew's house; and moved by the instinct
of my calling, I took advantage of the few minutes yet remaining before
train time, to make my way in its direction, cautiously, of course, and
with due allowance for the possible illumination following those fitful
bursts of light which brought everything to view in one moment, only to
plunge it all back into the profoundest obscurity the next.

I had two motives for my proceeding. One, as I say, sprang from the
natural instinct of investigation; the other was kindlier and