ever
come into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room.

But year and struggle ended. They ended at last, as I had prayed every
night and morning of it that they should end. Mother came into my room
one night, locked the door behind her, and walking over to the window,
stood with her face turned from me, and softly spoke my name.

But that was all, for a little while. Then,--"Sick and in suffering,
Sarah! The girl,--she may be right; God Almighty knows! _Sick and in
suffering_, you see! I am going--I think." Then her voice broke.

Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day,
that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, on
sudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected,
and just like the Dugalds for all the world--gone to hunt up material
for that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that they
thought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Creston
understood it perfectly.

Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given
as to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time,
were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had
professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,--the trance
being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was
pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was
about to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and places
necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient
distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical
undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she
herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I
confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly gone,
and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes forever on
us. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her garret-room before I
could sleep.

Just three weeks from the day on which mother started for the West, the
coach rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up
the walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight;
the other, bent and worn, gray-haired and shallow and dumb, crawling
feebly through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious
life might crawl back to its grave.