comprehend the family crisis. The diaphanous clouds of light that had clustered before the great carved marble fireplace scattered, each going to a place by itself. After a few moments each began to receive an account of what had befallen the family. The disclosures came with what to us would have been bewildering rapidity, until all learned the truth, regardless of their prejudices and predilections. They absorbed the intelligence much as we read the news flashed upon stereopticon screens in our streets at election-times. Each event took the form of a reproduction of an actual occurrence in the life of an earthly Lamont. The revelations began with the family affairs at the last moment, receding to whatever point led each visitant to the situation as he last knew it. Each scene came like a flash of light, and the words spoken by the living Lamonts- yes, even the thoughts which prompted speech or silence in each tableau-were made known to these disembodied intelligences. With a great extension of our faculties, even we could have seen these tableaux flashing like pulsations of light before each vaporlike form.

Presently all came together again to discuss their readings of the future, for, given the premises in any case, Etherians at once divine the future, more or less clearly according to their differing powers, as we shall see.

"How the clock will race when the old wretch is once out of the house!" said Hamilton's wife, Deborah.

"My Alex?" exclaimed the old Colonel's mother, in surprise.

"Oh, Deborah, you forget that I am here!" said Editha, softly. "Surely you saw him as he has been since I came to his bedside. I threw the influence of my love around him, and such a kindly smile set itself on his dear face, so calm did his sleep become, and so gentle were his dreams-oh, you could not speak as you do of him if you really knew him."

"He was always gentle enough towards you," Hamilton said; "but, come, now; he's been a bear to every one else, you must admit.”

"Aunt Isabel," said Mrs. Paton, "you see clearly. Who is this new claimant

to the estate?"

"It is a woman, and her path is crossed as if by chasms," Mrs. Deborah remarked.

66

She is my daughter's child," said Mrs. Lamont, "but you do not know her because her parents were separated from the family in anger years ago, and are both on earth. It is for those of us who love justice to see that she is made the heir, and to see also" (here she gave a swift glance at Deborah Lamont) “that the plots of those who would couple this fortune with evil are brought to nothing." "I am not able to see far as yet," said Editha, despairingly, "though I can read the present perfectly. My husband thinks he has no heir except Hamilton's son, Jack or Archibald, the son of our cousins, the Patons, here. Though you are his brother, Hamilton, and your son would naturally be the heir, the mere mention of Jack's name angers the Colonel. He says he would squander the property, therefore he turned to Archibald to-day, and was met by an unexpected obstacle.'

"Why not say he has disowned Jack? I know it," said Mrs. Deborah. "Oh! what an outrage it is! You are all against my son. Talk of justice! Why, the property is his by right."

"I think the only justice is what is happening," said her husband. "If I could, I would not exert my influence to have Jack made the heir. Better far that the property should go to the State than that the honored old house should become the rendezvous of courtesans and blacklegs, and the scene of his orgies. I gave up all hope for him before my responsibilities ceased."

"When did yours cease?" his wife asked, warmly. "I am his mother yet. He was always led to expect his uncle's fortune when ours should be exhausted. He has pursued pleasure, but only as thousands do who are similarly placed. He is not in the way of any of you. Why are you all bent on wrecking his future?"

"He owes the wrecking of his life to you, Deborah," said the elder Mrs. Lamont. "You indulged him in everything.

You always condoned his faults; you even encouraged him in his idle, mis chievous course."

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"Young Archie's refusal to accept my husband's offer," said Editha, SO excited the Colonel that I had difficulty in calming him. When he told Archibald to-day that he would make him his heir on condition that he changed his name to Lamont, Archie not only refused to accept the condition, but spoke rudely, and— well, the Colonel's indignation was natural. Archibald said that he had not only made his own name famous by his writings, but that it would be an act of dishonor to his father's memory to change it."

"The fact is, as we all know," said Mrs. Deborah, in her most combative tone, "that the Colonel used the most insulting language about Archibald's family, saying that it was common and vulgar. He told Archibald that his father had been dependent on his, the Colonel's, assistance, to lift him out of financial troubles and keep his head above water. He said that his father died in his debt, though he might have paid him had he not been too self-indulgent. Archibald was furious at the old badger, and I admire him for it."

"Archie's a good boy," said his father. "I am proud of him."

"He is far too quixotic," exclaimed Mrs. Paton. "I hope he has not gone too far to retreat. I seem to see him in the will at the end of this confusion."

"Archibald is happy with his work and his friends in New York," interposed Deborah." He is too true a man to stoop to rob my boy of his rightful heritage."

"Your son will not inherit the property, Deborah, no matter what you do,' said Mrs. Lamont. "Take my advice; employ your influence to save him from worse misfortunes to come."

His

time his faithful old servant Tappin, who rarely left his bedside, betook himself to . his own room, and flung himself in all his clothes upon his bed, where the spirit of his father sought his company. Young Archibald Paton sat, wide awake, in his bedroom. He was a tall and handsome man of thirty years, thin of frame, with a pale, nervous face, the strength of which was in his high brow and kindling eyes. His face was American, but the unmistakably French cut of his pointed beard gave him a Parisian air. The rings and the charms which rattled on his watchchain were other relics of the years he had spent abroad. His father and mother found him calmly reading a novel by the light of his bedroom candle, though the day had been the stormiest of his life, and he was determined to leave the house next day, putting it behind him as he had already done with the offer of all its owner's wealth.

Mrs. Deborah sought her son and found him in Powellton, at cards, in the hotel. She stood close beside him as he drew toward him the small silver coins he had won with his last hand of cards.

"Come," she said, by a focussing of her thought upon his mind.

He leaned back in his chair, hesitating a moment in that position. Then he rose, and leaving the coins where they were, said: "I won't play any more. I feel peculiar--that is, I can't keep my mind on the game. Buy my share of the drinks with that money. I am going to get a breath of air." Then he passed out with his mother, and walked to a carriageblock by the road, and sat down. He imagined that he gave himself up to thought about his affairs; in reality he was engaged in a struggle to comprehend the counsel his mother poured out upon him.

Beside the Colonel's bed the old man's mother turned to her daughter-in-law.

"I cannot think why you are here," she said.

"Why I am here?" Editha repeated. "Where should I be but beside my husband at this time of change?"

"You can serve him best by going to Laura Balm. Do you not feel her need of you?"

"It is my granddaughter, Laura," Mrs. Lamont said. "My daughter's child, of whom the others spoke as the heir. Don't you remember that the Colonel quarrelled with a younger sister over a love-match that he forbade? It was with a man of doubtful character; you must have known of it."

"I didn't know there was a child by that marriage. But if I am needed, let me try my utmost, instantly," the sympathetic Editha replied. "Where shall I find my niece?"

"Laura is a sweet girl," Mrs. Lamont replied, "and you are called to her because you and she are in the completest affinity. You will be thwarted somewhat, but don't ask how, or allow your self to be discouraged, for even while you fancy yourself helpless you will comfort and encourage her amid serious difficulties and alarms.”

"What am I to do?"

"You will find that she does not know of us. She has lived in the completest innocence, and, so far as the world is concerned, ignorance. She must be made acquainted with and brought to the good fortune that awaits her, but many mishaps and counterplots will have to be overcome. Go at once. Concentrate your mind on hers. As soon as possible dominate her so that you can counsel her. The power is in you. Exercise it. It is we who rule the affairs of men and women in their greatest crises. They call what we do by such names as impulse, conscience, foresight, judgmenta hundred fumbling, foggy words; but all this you will understand quickly. Now go. Will yourself at Lingard's Mill, beyond Fishkill. Just after you Just after you leave Fishkill, on the right of the main road, is a lane leading to the north. She is in the first house-the only house near the main road. I see you have no time to lose. She is in trouble and under bad influence; but it is weak, like all evil influence. Go. I will care for my son." "Ought I to leave him? Can you soothe him as I could?"

"Go, child. I can control my son, while you cannot. My part is to make him realize that there is a Laura Balm. He does not know it. We will bring them together if he lives long enough. As for soothing him, the world says that a mother's is the only love that is unselfish; certainly yours cannot be more tender."

CHAPTER II.

A PEARL OUT OF SETTING.

WHEN Editha's spirit reached the house in which she was to find Laura Balm, she was surprised to discover it a laborer's tenement a tiny, aged brick cabin, with an undulating roof green with moss. It consorted so well with its pastoral surroundings that we Americans would carry off a camera's reflection of it were it in some other country than our own, because of its picturesqueness and OldWorldishness, but nowhere could we consider it a suitable shelter for a gentle girl. It was all the more picturesque, perhaps, because it was in need of repair, and because the yard around it was in a state of disorder. Editha hovered before the place for a moment, shocked at finding it so different from what should be the abode of an heir to the Lamont wealth. Indoors, matters were worse. The disorder had all the ear-marks of a slattern's housekeeping. Even the débris of the last meal-at which a whiskey-bottle had figured conspicuously still littered the table.

But upstairs in a sweet-aired, tidy room, upon a snowy bed, amid the pretty-pretties with which a girl of refined taste would surround herself, lay a beautiful maiden fast asleep. Her sunlit hair, caught up in a knot at the back, hung loosely on either side of her finely cut face. Grief and trouble were enthroned behind that face, yet these were too newly come to have left a trace there. Its shape was slender oval, its type was spiritual and dainty, yet the lips were full and eloquent of kindliness, humor, and the qualities that accompany robust health. Editha could see the girl's eyes through their closed lids, and knew that they were large, and of as light a blue as the sky when the sun is highest. It was a good and lovable face that appeared there above a ruffle of snowy lace, and it impelled Editha to kiss her-if an Etherian touch to the girl's cheek may be so called-with many of those soft kisses which pray God most of us have been and are often to be blessed with, yet that we can never be certain we have enjoyed, because they are as gentle as the glances of angels, as soft as the breathings of flowers, and as noiseless to our ears as the music of the sun's rays that sing their way through space.

"Laura! dear Laura! I am come to

Tell

you," the spirit said, in a thought-whisper; "a loving friend is with you. me, sweet child, what is troubling you. How can I help you?"

The golden-framed cameo face upon the pillow moved with gentle restlessness, a slender arm, like ivory tinted with the sap of rose petals, was pulled from under the bed-covering and thrown down upon it. The corners of the budding lips drew downwards in an expression of sadness and perplexity. A sigh which only keen hearing could catch escaped from the sleeper. Laura was telling the child wife her troubles; at least she was recalling to herself the state of her mind, and fancying some one in dreamland had sympa thized with her.

The kindly Etherian drew back and fixed her gaze with intensity upon the dreaming girl.

"No, no," she cried, "my powers are not yet strong. What does she say? Her father away-does not know where; mother ill shrieking-carried from this house? Can she mean that her mother is mad? She is alone, friendless, penniless-she certainly is thinking that to me. But I get only fragments, and cannot connect them. I must understand her.

Dear Laura, try again to tell me everything."

Were we to content ourselves with such slow and patient processes as Editha commanded in order to absorb what information she got from Laura Balm, this story would lag unconscionably, and it would be disappointingly incomplete as well. Let us arrive at the same goal quicker and better by our own methods.

It was more than twenty years, then, since Laura's mother made her choice between the guardianship of her brother the Colonel, at the Clock House, and that of Jerrold Balm, the lover whose aimless life had led the Colonel to refuse him even the standing of a visitor at the Clock House. Her choice made, Laura's mother saw the Colonel's door closed behind her forever. She married, and went to live in Europe, bravely determining to make the best of a match which even she mistrusted. The ill-mated couple were never happy after the bloom, the novelty, of their new relationship had gone. Balm had scarcely a trace of her strongest qualities-pride and ambition. She was refined in her tastes and pure of soul, while he was coarse in his and without sufficient

VOL. XCVII.-No 580.-72

principle to ballast a well-ordered or even a reputable career. They quarrelled. He violated his vows of fidelity. She scolded and cried, and in the end he left her and her baby daughter, sending them afterward that portion of his income which is usually left after the exactions of a mistress have been met- barely enough to keep up a partnership between body and soul.

Hearing that an old servant had become a widow and was living alone at the tiny cluster of cottages called Lingard's Mill, Mrs. Balm came as a boarder to the house in which we have found her daughter. She never made her return to America known to her brother. Her pride was unbendable. The servant died, and in his turn her husband married, and died, and the poor home of the Balms was thus quickly left in charge of this second widow. Mrs. Balm escaped from a terrible illness with the loss of her mind, and had been taken to an asylum only a week before Editha's visit, leaving Laura alone with a woman of what is called in the South "poor white" stock, a virago at best, and at the worst a frequent victim of drink.

Laura's little world was thus shattered at a blow. For her world had consisted of nothing more than her mother and the books out of which Mrs. Balm drew an education for her. The changing women of the cottage touched upon her life only as they waited upon her as servants. Now, for a week, she had been alone. And on this day when Editha had come to her she had been made to see not merely that she was alone, but that she was helpless and friendless. And this she learned through even harder faring than necessarily falls to those who are in such a desperate strait.

"You! You! up there! Yes, I mean you; come down here at once."

Thus her landlady, Mrs. Turley, screamed up to her from the stair-bottom early in the afternoon preceding Editha's visit. She had never before addressed Laura in such a manner, or shown her the slightest lack of respect.

The young lady came down in such a state of surprise that she might have been likened to a person moving through a dense fog. It was when she reached the one common room of the house-the kitchen, sitting and dining room that she saw that Mrs. Turley had been at

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