wers, and surmounted by a clock. A piece of furniture for which
she knew no name, an evidence of long-established wealth and
old-fashioned luxury, of which she and her plain folk, with their
secretaries and desks and bureaus, had known nothing. The clock had
stopped at three o'clock. Mrs. Field thought to herself that it might
have been the hour on which old Mr. Maxwell died, reflecting that
souls were more apt to pass away in the wane of the night. She would
have like to wind the clock, and set the hands moving past that
ghostly hour, but she did not dare to stir. She gazed at the large,
dull figures sprawling over the old carpet, at the glimmering satiny
scrolls on the wall-paper. On the mantel-shelf stood a branching gilt
candlestick, filled with colored candles, and strung around with
prisms, which glittered feebly in the low lamp-light. There was a
bulging, sheet-iron wood stove--the Maxwells had always eschewed
coal; beside it lay a little pile of sticks, brought in after the
chill of death had come over the house. There were a few old
engravings--a head of Washington, the Landing of the Pilgrims, the
Webster death-bed scene, and one full-length portrait of the old
statesman, standing majestically, scroll in hand, in a black frame.

As the oil burned low, the indistinct figures upon the carpet and
wall-paper grew more indistinct, the brilliant colors of the prisms
turned white, and the fine black and white lights in the death-bed
picture ran together.

Finally the lamp went out. Mrs. Field had spied matches over on the
shelf, but she did not dare to rise to cross the room to get them and
find another lamp. She did not dare to stir.

After her light went out, there was still a pale glimmer upon the
opposite wall, and the white face of the silent clock showed out
above the cumbersome shadow of the great mahogany piece. The glimmer
came from a neighbor's lamp shining through a gap in the trees. Soon
that also went out, and the old woman sat there in total darkness.

She folded her hands primly, and held up her bonneted head in the
darkness, like some decorous and formal caller who might expect at
any moment to hear the soft, heavy step of the host upon the creaking
stair and his voice in the room. She sat there so all night.

Gradually this steady-headed, unimaginative old woman became
possessed by a legion of morbid fancies, which played like wild fire
over the terrible main fact of the case--the fact that unde