“It isn’t anything but the bones, you know. We all look like that under our flesh.” Comforting thought! It required a long time for me to control myself so that I could enter into the doll-dressing with spirit; and every now and then, as we cut, and planned, and sewed, especially as the light grew dimmer, I turned my head over my shoulder, gingerly, just enough to make sure that the “thing” was not striding toward me. Right glad was I when we were called down to our weak tea, and over the honey and hot biscuits I forgot for the time the agony of fear I had endured. That night, however, the skeleton was “after me” all the time; and my ineffectual struggles to get my long yellow hair out of its bony hands woke me many times with agonizing cries. And all this because my young imagination had been poisoned by ghost stories—the ghost always being represented by a skeleton partially covered with white drapery. I believe now in the “inquisition of science”;—that one of its most sacred functions is to seize and punish any person found guilty of entertaining the sensitive, unformed brain of the child with the horrors of the grave, of death, of hell, or any of the unverifiable hypotheses of theology and superstition, born of the general ignorance incident to the childhood of the human race. CHAPTER III. DR. FOREST AT HOME. The doctor was about forty years old, but his hair was beginning to turn gray and his fine head was a little bald upon the top. He was about the medium height, muscular, with handsome broad shoulders, and very slightly inclined to stoutness. He had fine grey eyes, which he was in the habit of half closing when anything puzzled him. It was an exceedingly benevolent and expressive face, which won utter confidence at the first glance. He wore light, steel-bowed spectacles, which he never removed, apparently, from one year’s end to another. In repose, his mouth had an expression of severity; and when studying, he had a curious habit of protruding his under-lip; but the moment he spoke this mouth became handsome, expressing the large-heartedness and the ready humor that made him a favorite with all who knew him.