re are no ghosts here. Sigurd is only looking at the wall.
Perhaps he heard a rat or a mouse in there."

"_Ouch!_" shrilled Ellen, dodging out of the door in a fresh paroxysm
of fright. "Rats and mice is it! Rats and mice do be the black spirits
come to gnaw out our brains. And here they've come for Poor Ellen's
wits. They chase Poor Ellen wherever she goes. But she'll give thim the
slip on the morrow."

While Joy-of-Life brought Ellen in, quieted her with malted milk and
sent her to bed, I puzzled over Sigurd, whose staring eyes and
bristling hair still gave evidence of something we could not discern.
Other observers of dog conduct have testified to occurrences of this
kind, as, very recently, the master of a red cocker spaniel (Walter E.
Carr in _The Story of Five Dogs_) and from far antiquity the Arabs, who
hold that a dog can see the wings of the Angel of Death hovering over
the one for whom Azrael has been sent.

Ellen came down in the morning, still determined on departure and
entirely content with the place we had secured for her. All that day
through she was her most cleanly, thrifty and cheerful self. Nothing
would do but she must sweep the whole house from attic to cellar,
especially scouring her own room until it was pure enough for Diana.
Pleased with the bustle of packing and getting off, evidently an
habitual state of things with Poor Ellen, she graced her farewell with
a flourish of economical courtesies. She presented Joy-of-Life with a
banana which she had blarneyed from our Italian fruit-vender, and gave
me a little jar of cream, begged or bullied from the milkman in the
early dawn. As for Sigurd, she made him a square foot of his favorite
corn bread and hung a Catholic medal to his collar. She went off in the
best of humor, greatly set up by her own cleverness in having been able
to make, so cheaply, such suitable good-by gifts. When the expressman
came for her shabby, bulging bag, she treated him to such a nice little
luncheon of cookies and lemonade that he offered her a ride to the
station. From the driver's lofty seat she waved us a queenly adieu,
calling back: "The Lord loves Poor Ellen, after all." Sigurd ran with
the wagon as far as the corner. The last we saw of his psychic
instructor, she was kissing her workworn hands to him and shrilling
back endearments.

THE PLEADERS

Before the Majesty of Most High God
The gentlest of the glad Archangels came;
Swift down the