distinctly tangible. Somebody had been taking liberties with her wardrobe. Somebody had been hanging someone else’s clothes in her closet. She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight down to the parlour. The people were seated there; the widow and the minister were playing backgammon. The librarian was watching them. Miss Amanda Gill was mending beside the large lamp on the centre table. They all looked up with amazement as Louisa Stark entered. There was something strange in her expression. She noticed none of them except Amanda.
“Where is your sister?” she asked peremptorily of her.
“She’s in the kitchen mixing up bread,” Amanda quavered; “is there anything—” But the school-teacher was gone.
She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough with dignity. The young girl Flora was bringing some flour from the pantry. She stopped and stared at Miss Stark, and her pretty, delicate young face took on an expression of alarm.
Miss Stark opened at once upon the subject in her mind.
“Miss Gill,” said she, with her utmost school-teacher manner, “I wish to inquire why you have had my own clothes removed from the closet in my room and others substituted?”
Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her. Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.
“What? I don’t quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark,” said she.
“My clothes are not in the closet in my room and it is full of things which do not belong to me,” said Louisa Stark.
“Bring me that flour,” said Sophia sharply to the young girl, who obeyed, casting timid, startled glances at Miss Stark as she passed her. Sophia Gill began rubbing her hands clear of the dough. “I am sure I know nothing about it,” she said with a certain tempered asperity. “Do you know anything about it, Flora?”
“Oh, no, I don’t know anything about it, Aunt Sophia,” answered the young girl, fluttering.
Then Sophia turned to Miss Stark. “I’ll go upstairs with you, Miss Stark,” said she, “and see what the trouble is. There must be some mistake.” She spoke stiffly with constrained civility.
“Very well,” said Miss Stark with dignity. Then she and Miss Sophia went upstairs. Flora stood staring after them.
Sophia and Louisa Stark went up to the southwest chamber. The closet door was shut. Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark. On the pegs hung the schoolteacher’s own garments in ordinary array.
“I can’t see that there is anything wrong,” remarked Sophia grimly.
Miss Stark strove to speak but she could not. She sank down on the nearest chair. She did not even attempt to defend herself. She saw her own clothes in the closet. She knew there had been no time for any human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers in their places. She knew it was impossible. Again the awful horror of herself overwhelmed her.
“You must have been mistaken,” she heard Sophia say.
She muttered something, she scarcely knew what. Sophia then went out of the room. Presently she undressed and went to bed. In the morning she did not go down to breakfast, and when Sophia came to inquire, requested that the stage be ordered for the noon train. She said that she was sorry, but was ill, and feared lest she might be worse, and she felt that she must return home at once. She looked ill, and could not take even the toast and tea which Sophia had prepared for her. Sophia felt a certain pity for her, but it was largely mixed with indignation. She felt that she knew the true reason for the school-teacher’s illness and sudden departure, and it incensed her.
“If folks are going to act like fools we shall never be able to keep this house,” she said to Amanda after Miss Stark had gone; and Amanda knew what she meant.
Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the school-teacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour and decision which reassured her.
“I have no objection, Mrs. Simmons,” said she, “if—”
“If what?” asked the widow.
“If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room happens to be the one my aunt died in,” said Sophia bluntly.
“Fiddlesticks!” said the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons.
That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber. The young girl Flora assisted her, though much against her will.
“Now I want you to carry Mrs. Simmons’ dresses into the closet in that room and hang them up nicely, and see that she has everything she wants,” said Sophia Gill. “And you can change the bed and put on fresh sheets. What are you looking at me that way for?”
“Oh, Aunt Sophia, can’t I do something else?”
“What do you want to do something else for?”
“I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what? I should think you’d hang your head. No; you go right in there and do what I tell you.”
Pretty soon Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap.
“What’s that?” demanded Sophia.
“I found it under the pillow.”
“What pillow?”
“In the southwest room.”
Sophia took it and looked at it sternly.
“It’s Great-aunt Harriet’s,” said Flora faintly.
“You run down street and do that errand at the grocer’s for me and I’ll see that room,” said Sophia with dignity. She carried the nightcap away and put it in the trunk in the garret where she had supposed it stored with the rest of the dead woman’s belongings. Then she went into the southwest chamber and made the bed and assisted Mrs. Simmons to move, and there was no further incident.
The widow was openly triumphant over her new room. She talked a deal about it at the dinner-table.
“It is the best room in the house, and I expect you all to be envious of me,” said she.
“And you are sure you don’t feel afraid of ghosts?” said the librarian.
“Ghosts!” repeated the widow with scorn. “If a ghost comes I’ll send her over to you. You are just across the hall from the southwest room.”
“You needn’t,” returned Eliza Lippincott with a shudder. “I wouldn’t sleep in that room, after—” she checked herself with an eye on the minister.
“After what?” asked the widow.
“Nothing,” replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.
“I trust Miss Lippincott has too good
