y,
Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl with
unmixed terror. The widow bore herself with dignity.

"I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been
accounted for in some rational manner," said she.

"What was it?" persisted Eliza Lippincott.

"I do not wish to discuss the matter any further," replied Mrs. Simmons
shortly. Then she passed her plate for more creamed potato. She felt
that she would die before she confessed to the ghastly absurdity of
that nightcap, or to having been disturbed by the flight of peacocks
off a blue field of chintz after she had scoffed at the possibility of
such a thing. She left the whole matter so vague that in a fashion she
came off the mistress of the situation. She at all events impressed
everybody by her coolness in the face of no one knew what nightly
terror.

After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved
back into her old room. Scarcely a word was spoken during the process
of moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and looked guilty
when they met one another's eyes, as if conscious of betraying a common
fear.

That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill and
requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that night.

"I don't ask to have my effects moved there," said he, "for I could
scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy, but I
would like, if you please, to sleep there to-night for the purpose of
refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition which may have
obtained root here."

Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted his
offer.

"How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such
nonsense passes my comprehension," said she.

"It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe
in ghosts," said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain
feminine contentment in hearing him. The minister was a child to her;
she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to
hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby
exalted.

That night about twelve o'clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to
his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber. He had been sitting up
until that hour preparing his sermon.

He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand, opened the
door of the southwest chamber, and essayed to enter. He might