rs, just as always before. She went
on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to
give the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was
a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain.

Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter
which I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk
of it before.

I was coming from over the ridge, one day--it was the 15th of May,
'28--and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to step
out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech tree
stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first--then I took a step
backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For
I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of
playful surprise for her. Think of it--that trivial conceit was neighbor,
with but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event
destined to endure forever in histories and songs.

The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree stood
lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed by gnarled
great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the
other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward the ground, and her
air was that of one who is lost to thought, steeped in dreams, and
not conscious of herself or of the world. And now I saw a most strange
thing, for I saw a white shadow come slowly gliding along the grass
toward the Tree. It was of grand proportions--a robed form, with
wings--and the whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness
that we know of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even
the lightnings are not so intense as it was, for one can look at them
without hurt, whereas this brilliancy was so blinding that it pained my
eyes and brought the water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving
that I was in the presence of something not of this world. My breath
grew faint and difficult, because of the terror and the awe that
possessed me.

Another strange thing. The wood had been silent--smitten with that deep
stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild
creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth
into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond
belief; and was so eloquent and so mo