pying her idle time, but of decoying her into staying on
with us, evening by evening, until my son's return. The new project
which she had herself unconsciously suggested involved nothing less than
acting forthwith on her own chance hint, and appealing to her interest
and curiosity by the recital of incidents and adventures drawn from my
own personal experience and (if I could get them to help me) from the
experience of my brothers as well. Strange people and startling events
had connected themselves with Owen's past life as a clergyman, with
Morgan's past life as a doctor, and with my past life as a lawyer, which
offered elements of interest of a strong and striking kind ready to our
hands. If these narratives were written plainly and unpretendingly;
if one of them was read every evening, under circumstances that should
pique the curiosity and impress the imagination of our young guest, the
very occupation was found for her weary hours which would gratify her
tastes, appeal to her natural interest in the early lives of my brothers
and myself, and lure her insensibly into prolonging her visit by ten
days without exciting a suspicion of our real motive for detaining her.

I sat down at my desk; I hid my face in my hands to keep out all
impressions of external and present things; and I searched back through
the mysterious labyrinth of the Past, through the dun, ever-deepening
twilight of the years that were gone.

Slowly, out of the awful shadows, the Ghosts of Memory rose about me.
The dead population of a vanished world came back to life round me, a
living man. Men and women whose earthly pilgrimage had ended long since,
returned upon me from the unknown spheres, and fond, familiar voices
burst their way back to my ears through the heavy silence of the grave.
Moving by me in the nameless inner light, which no eye saw but mine,
the dead procession of immaterial scenes and beings unrolled its silent
length. I saw once more the pleading face of a friend of early days,
with the haunting vision that had tortured him through life by his
side again--with the long-forgotten despair in his eyes which had once
touched my heart, and bound me to him, till I had tracked his destiny
through its darkest windings to the end. I saw the figure of an innocent
woman passing to and fro in an ancient country house, with the shadow
of a strange suspicion stealing after her wherever she went. I saw a
man worn by hardship and old age, stretched