The thousandth-and-first attempt results as did the first. I shut my eyes to see—always the one figure, the same motion, the same disappearance. She was dressed in gray; she was small and lithe; her head was bowed upon her hands, and she slipped away, hugging the wall, as in flight, vanishing at the closed door. The door I had heard latch itself five minutes ago! Which did not open to let her through! I recall, as clearly as I see the apparition, what I thought in the few seconds that flew by as I stood to watch her. I was not in the least frightened at first. My young maid, Paulina, a bright mulatto of fifteen, had more than once that winter fallen asleep upon the rug before my fire, when she went into the room to see that all was in readiness for my retiring. The servants slept in buildings detached from the main residence, a custom to which I have referred before. “The house” was locked up by my father’s own hands at ten o’clock, unless there were some function to keep one or more of the servants up and on duty. Therefore, when I had twice awakened Paulina from her unlawful slumber, I had sent her off to the “offices”—in English parlance—with a sharp reproof and warning against a repetition of the offence. My instant thought now was: “The little minx has been at it again!” The next, “She went like a cat!” The third, in a lightning flash, “She did not open the door to go through!” Finally—“Nor did she open the door when she came out of my room!” I had never, up to that instant, known one thrill of supernatural dread since I was old enough to give full credence to my father’s assurances that there were no such things as ghosts, and to laugh at the tales told by ignorant negroes to frighten one another, and to awe white children. I had never been afraid of the darkness or of solitude. I would take my doll and book to the graveyard and spend whole happy afternoons there, because it was quiet and shady, and nobody would interrupt study or dream. It was, then, the stress of extraordinary emotion which swept me back into the room I had just quitted, and bore me up to the table by which my mother sat, there to set down the lamp I could scarcely hold, enunciating hoarsely: “I have seen a ghost!” My father wheeled sharply about. “_What!_” At that supreme moment, the influence of his scornful dislike to every species of superstition made me “hedge,” and falter, in articulating, “If there is such a thing as a ghost, I have seen one!” Before I could utter another sound he had caught up the lamp and was gone. Excited, and almost blind and dumb as I was, I experienced a new sinking of heart as I heard him draw back the bolt of the door through which the Thing had passed, without unclosing it. He explored the whole house, my mother and I sitting, silent, and listening to his swift tramp upon floor and stairs. In a few minutes the search was over. He was perfectly calm in returning to us.