d. Everybody was fond of her there. Nobody knew any thing about
her, nobody cared for her here."

So I go home. As I turn in at the park-gates, in the gray, wet gloom of
the November evening, I think of my first home-coming after my
wedding-tour.

Again I see the divine and jocund serenity of the summer evening--the
hot, red sunset making all the windows one great flame, and they all,
Barbara, Algy, Bobby, Tou Tou, laughing welcome to me from the opened
gate. To-night I feel as if they were _all_ dead.

I reach the house. I stand in the empty school-room!--I, alone, of all
the noisy six. The stains of our cookery still discolor the old carpet;
there is still the great ink-splash on the wall, that marks the spot
where the little inkstand, aimed by Bobby at my head, and dodged by me,
alighted.

How little I thought that those stains and that splash would ever speak
to me with voices of such pathos! I have asked to be allowed to sleep in
Barbara's and my old room. I am there now. I have thrown myself on
Barbara's little white bed, and am clasping her pillow in my empty arms.
Then, with blurred sight and swimming eyes, I look round at all our
little childish knick-knacks.

There is the white crockery lamb that she gave me the day I was six
years old! Poor little trumpery lamb! I snatch it up, and deluge its
crinkly back, and its little pink nose, with my scalding tears.

At night I cannot sleep. I have pulled aside the curtains, that through
the windows my eyes may see the high stars, beyond which she has gone.
Through the pane they make a faint and ghostly glimmer on the empty bed.

I sit up in the dead middle of the night, when the darkness and
so-called silence are surging and singing round me, while the whole room
feels full of spirit presences. _I alone!_ I am accompanied by a host--a
bodiless host.

I stretch out my arms before me, and cry out:

"Barbara! Barbara! If you are here, make some sign! I _command_ you,
touch me, speak to me! I shall not be afraid!--dead or alive, can I be
afraid of _you_?--give me some sign to let me know where you
are--whether it is worth while trying to be good to get to you! I
_adjure_ you, give me some sign!"

The tears are raining down my cheeks, as I eagerly await some answer.
Perhaps it will come in the cold, _cold_ air, by which some have known
of the presence of their dead; but in vain. The darkness and the silence
surge round me. Still, still I feel the spirit-presence