"My stars!" exclaimed Mrs. Gleason, starting up from the centre table, and dropping a bundle of snowy linen on the floor. "What in the name of creation is this?" cried Mr. Gleason, throwing down his book, as the yellow ball rolled violently against his legs. Louis Gleason, a boy of twelve, who was seated with the fingers of his left hand playing hide and seek among his bright elf locks, while his right danced over a slate, making algebra signs with marvelous rapidity, jumped up three feet in the air, letting his slate fall with a tremendous crash, and destroying many a beautiful equation. Mittie Gleason, a young girl of about nine, who was deep in the abstractions of grammar, and sat with her fore-fingers in her ears, and her head bent down to her book, so that all disturbing sounds might be excluded, threw her chair backward in the fright, and ran head first against Miss Thusa, who was the only one whose self-possession did not seem shocked by the unceremonious entrance of the little visitor. "It's nobody in the world but little Helen," said she, gathering up the bundle in her arms and carrying it towards the blazing fire. The child, who had been only stunned, not injured by the fall, began to recover the use of its faculties, and opened its large, wild-looking eyes on the family group we have described. "She has been walking in her sleep, poor little thing," said her mother, pressing her cold hands in both hers. Helen knew that this was not the case, and she knew too, that it was wrong to sanction by her silence an erroneous impression, but she was afraid of her father's anger if she confessed the truth, afraid that he would send her back to the dark room and lonely trundle-bed. She expected that Miss Thusa would call her a foolish child, and tell her parents all her terrors of the _worm-eaten traveler_, and she raised her timid eyes to her face, wondering at her silence. There was something in those prophetic orbs, which she could not read. There seemed to be a film over them, baffling her penetration, and she looked down with a long, laboring breath. Miss Thusa began to feel that her legends might make a deeper impression than she imagined or intended. She experienced an odd mixture of triumph and regret--triumph in her power, and regret for its consequences. She had, too, an instinctive sense that the parents of Helen would be displeased with her, were they aware of the influence she had exerted, and deprive her hereafter of the most admiring auditor that ever hung on her oracular lips. She had _meant_ no harm, but she was really sorry she had told that "powerful story" at such a late hour, and pressed the child closer in her arms with a tenderness deepened by self-reproach. "I suspect Miss Thusa has been telling her some of her awful ghost stories," said Louis, laughing over the wreck of his slate. "I know what sent the yellow caterpillar crawling down stairs."