“The hour had come. Upon the table by which Lizzie sat, stood the candle, and near it the apple which must be eaten as a part of the spell that was to raise the spirit of her lover. Strongly tempted was Lizzie, at this crisis, to rush from the room and abandon the bold experiment. Both hands of the clock would be on the point that marked the close of Halloween in a few seconds, and if she did not act now, the secret she so ardently desired to penetrate would still be hidden from her eyes. She felt awful in that moment of deep suspense. Her heart ceased for an instant to beat, and then bounded on again in troubled throbbings. Then, with a kind of desperate energy, she caught up the candle and apple, and turned to the glass that hung against the wall. As she did so, the brief lull in the tempest expired, and the wind, as if it had gained new power, rushed past with a wilder sound, and shook the house to its very foundation. “One glance into the mirror, as the hammer of the clock began to fall sufficed. A wild scream, thrilling through the house, accompanied by a noise as of some one falling heavily, aroused the sleeping parents. When they descended to the room below, they found Lizzie prostrate on the floor in a state of total insensibility.” “Why, aunt!” exclaimed Kate, in a husky voice. “What did she see?” asked Maggy, who had been listening with breathless attention. “It was many hours before the frightened girl came back to consciousness,” said Aunt Edith. “I saw her on the day afterward, and she looked as if she had been sick for a month. We were intimate, and on my asking her some questions, she told me what she had done, and avowed that, as she looked into the glass, she distinctly saw the face of a man peering over her shoulder.” “But you didn’t believe her,” said Mr. Wilmot. “Did she know the person whom she saw?” asked Maggy. “Yes. She told me who it was; and they were afterward married.” “Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Wilmot. “I’m really surprised at you, sister! You will turn these silly girls’ heads. You surely don’t believe that she saw any face in the glass besides her own.” “In imagination she did, without doubt. The fact of her fainting from alarm shows that.” “But you say, Aunt Edith, that she afterward married the person she saw?”