as a lumber-room, running out slantingly to the eaves of
the house, with a low entrance into it, which was left without a door.
This lumber-room had long been her especial terror. Whenever she passed
it, even in broad daylight, it had a strange, mysterious appearance to
her. The twilight shadows always gathered there first and lingered last;
she never walked by it--she always ran with all her speed, as if the
avenger of blood were behind her. Now she would have flown if she could,
but her long night dress impeded her motions, and clung adhesively round
her ankles. Once she trod upon it, and thinking some one arrested her,
she uttered a loud scream and sprang forward through the door, which
chanced to be open. This door was directly at the head of the stairs,
and it is not at all surprising that Helen, finding it impossible to
recover her equilibrium, should pass over the steps in a quicker manner
than she intended, swift as her footsteps were. Down she went, tumbling
and bumping, till she came against the lower door with a force that
burst it open, and in rolled a yellow flannel ball into the centre of
the illuminated apartment.

"My stars!" exclaimed Mrs. Gleason, starting up from the centre table,
and dropping a bundle of snowy linen on the floor.

"What in the name of creation is this?" cried Mr. Gleason, throwing down
his book, as the yellow ball rolled violently against his legs.

Louis Gleason, a boy of twelve, who was seated with the fingers of his
left hand playing hide and seek among his bright elf locks, while his
right danced over a slate, making algebra signs with marvelous rapidity,
jumped up three feet in the air, letting his slate fall with a
tremendous crash, and destroying many a beautiful equation.

Mittie Gleason, a young girl of about nine, who was deep in the
abstractions of grammar, and sat with her fore-fingers in her ears, and
her head bent down to her book, so that all disturbing sounds might be
excluded, threw her chair backward in the fright, and ran head first
against Miss Thusa, who was the only one whose self-possession did not
seem shocked by the unceremonious entrance of the little visitor.

"It's nobody in the world but little Helen," said she, gathering up the
bundle in her arms and carrying it towards the blazing fire. The child,
who had been only stunned, not injured by the fall, began to recover the
use of its faculties, and opened its large, wild-looking eyes on the
family group