ways,--we may cleave to one
another, or separate forever."

A low, dark house. The south-side planted out from the sun by pines and
cedars. The parlors covered with well-worn Turkey carpets, chafed into
dusty ridges. The wretched window-glass breaking and distorting the
pine-trees without. Little oval mirrors distorting the human countenance
within. In the living-room (so called by those able to live in it)
loomed a rusty air-tight stove of cathedral proportion,--a ghastly altar
which the bitterest enemy of the family might feel fully justified in
protecting. A square, cellarless room, about twenty feet from the house,
had been the study of the elder Vannelle. Tables covered with a confused
mass of writing-materials. A jumble of retorts and other chemical
apparatus about the floor. Cabinets of the ugliest pattern reached to
the ceiling;--at first I supposed them to be made of painted wood;
afterwards I discovered they were of iron, and filled with rare books
and manuscripts.

"My father built this study," said Vannelle, as we passed into it. "He
wished to get rid of those periodical clearings-up from which there is
no escape in a New-England household. Mrs. Brett, the wife of our
farmer, could never resist the feminine itch to put things to rights.
She was always contriving to arrange papers and books in symmetrical
piles where nothing could be found. My father could never turn his back
but she was sure to annihilate important scraps of writing that were
lying about the floor, and, under pretence of sweeping, invoke a simoom
of dust that hours were insufficient to allay. But when he built this
room, and kept the key of it, there was no more trouble."

I shudder as I hurry through these descriptions, for a confession which
I hardly dare to put into words must accompany them. All these
surroundings, seen by me for the first time, had a fearful familiarity.
In some occult state of spiritual existence I seemed to have known them
all. I have learned that the soul may enter into communion with other
minds otherwise than through the senses,--nay, more, it may thus take an
inexplicable cognizance of material things. Of this I have had such
proof as it would be infatuation to doubt. I was compelled to test this
startling suspicion for the first time.

"You need not take me up-stairs, Herbert," I said, as we returned to the
house. "The picture of your father, which hangs in the large chamber
projecting over the porch, was do