al hours, and finally awakening from it
terribly exhausted. But the trance brought the honey, for a wonderful
vision came upon her, wherein spirit-forms appeared clothed in
overwhelming radiance, and, after caressing her spiritual form for some
time, and making her realize that she was an accepted child of Light,
pointed their dazzling celestial fingers towards an old hollow stump
standing at the side of the road leading towards town. So powerful and
penetrating was the light which radiated from these spirits that it
seemed to permeate the stump, leaving its form perfect as ever, but
making it wholly translucent, so that she could see the boxes of honey
piled up within the stump as clearly as though she had been standing
beside it and it had been made of glass. She gave this information to
her father, who ridiculed the revelation, but was both curious and
desirous of getting the honey, and went to the old stump, where he found
the boxes uninjured and piled in precisely the same manner as described
by his precocious child; all of which was related as if thoroughly
believed--as it doubtless was--in a voice as hollow and mysterious as
the stump itself, while the operatives preserved the utmost gravity and
decorum, and impressed her in every way with their belief in her varied
and wonderful power.

Her affection for Bristol continued for a few weeks unabated, and her
most powerful arts were used in endeavoring to compel him to reciprocate
it. These attempts went as far as a naturally lewd and naturally shrewd
woman dare go--so far, in fact, that in one and the last instance they
became absurdly ridiculous. There was no bolt upon the door of either of
their sleeping-rooms, and, besides, it was necessary for Bristol to
either retire first or step into Fox's room for a little chat, or a
sociable smoke, as Mrs. Winslow had an unpleasant and persistent habit
of disrobing for the night in the reception-room.

One evening, after Mrs. Winslow had given a select seance to a few
admiring friends, including my detectives, Bristol had hurried off to
bed, being tired of the mummery, and after being obliged to listen for
some time to her tumblings and tappings about the room, had finally
fallen into a peaceful doze of a few minutes' duration, when he was
awakened by that undefinable yet irresistibly increasing sense of some
sort of a presence, which often takes from one the power of expression,
or action, but intensifies the mind's facu