In all Jelly's past life she had never been actually superstitious; if told that she was so now, she would have replied that it was because circumstances had forced it upon her. That Mrs. Rane's spirit had appeared to her that memorable night for one sole purpose--that she, Jelly, should avenge her dreadful end by publicly disclosing it, Jelly believed as implicitly as she believed in the Gospel. Not a soul in the whole wide world but herself (saving of course Dr. Rane) had the faintest idea that the death was not a natural one. Jelly moaned and groaned, and thought her fate unjustly hard that _she_ should have been signalled out by Heaven--for so she solemnly put it--for the revelation, when there were so many others in the community of Dallory who might have done it better than herself. Jelly had periods of despondency, when she did not quite know whether her head was on or off, or whether her mind wouldn't "go." Why couldn't the ghost have appeared to some one else, she would mentally ask at these moments: to Phillis, say; or to Dinah; or to Seeley the surgeon? Just because she had been performing an act of charity in sitting up with Keller's sick child, it must show itself to _her!_ And then Jelly's brain would go off into problems, that it might have puzzled one wiser than she to answer. Supposing she had not been at Ketler's that night, the staircase blind would have been drawn at dusk as usual, she would have gone to bed at her ordinary hour, have seen, nothing, and been spared all this misery. But no. It was not to be. And although Jelly, in her temper, might wish to throw the blame on Ketler for staying out, and on Dinah for her negligence, she recognized the finger of Destiny in all this, and knew she could not have turned aside from it.