family, and there was nothing in Roger's upbringing to
correct the tendency. His was not a sceptical or scientific mind. He
was ignorant and poetical and credulous. He had always accepted
unquestioningly the tale that Isabel Temple had been seen on earth
long after the red clay was heaped over her murdered body. Her
bridegroom had seen her, when he went to visit her on the eve of his
second and unhappy marriage; his grandfather had seen her. His
grandmother, who had told him Isabel's story, had told him this too,
and believed it. She had added, with a bitterness foreign to his idea
of her, that her husband had never been the same to her afterwards;
his uncle had seen her--and had lived and died a haunted man. It was
only to men the lovely, restless ghost appeared, and her appearance
boded no good to him who saw. Roger knew this, but he had a curious
longing to see her. He had never avoided her grave as others of his
tribe did. He loved the spot, and he believed that some time he would
see Isabel Temple there. She came, so the story went, to one in each
generation of the family.

He gazed down at her sunken grave; a little wind, that came stealing
along the floor of the grove, raised and swayed the long, hair-like
grass on it, giving the curious suggestion of something prisoned under
it trying to draw a long breath and float upward.

Then, when he lifted his eyes again, he saw her!

She was standing behind the gravestone, under the cherry tree, whose
long white branches touched her head; standing there, with her head
drooping a little, but looking steadily at him. It was just between
dusk and dark now, but he saw her very plainly. She was dressed in
white, with some filmy scarf over her head, and her hair hung in a
dark heavy braid over her shoulder. Her face was small and
ivory-white, and her eyes were very large and dark. Roger looked
straight into them and they did something to him--drew something out
of him that was never to be his again--his heart? his soul? He did not
know. He only knew that lovely Isabel Temple had now come to him and
that he was hers forever.

For a few moments that seemed years he looked at her--looked till the
lure of her eyes drew him to his feet as a man rises in sleep-walking.
As he slowly stood up, the low-hanging bough of a fir tree pushed his
cap down over his face and blinded him. When he snatched it off, she
was gone.

* * * * *

Roger Temple did n