But the good-natured girl’s efforts were useless. The sisters sat as stiff in their chairs as if they had been the figures in a pagoda irresponsive to the dance of the worshippers. Even the confident will-power of youth, which under-estimates all difficulties, was staggered by the resistance offered to its efforts, and the young Martha was obliged to leave without attaining an object over which she had been dreaming the preceding night. Next morning the chalk line was renewed, the still air of the room in Burnet’s Close had recovered its quietude from the oscillation produced by the young girl’s laugh, and the demon of obstinacy sat enshrined in its niche which it had occupied for so many years; nor had the after visits of the younger Martha had any better effect towards the object that lay nearest to her generous heart. And now a month had passed; a particular morning rose--not marked by an asterisk in the calendar, and yet remarkable for opening with the thickest gray dawn that had been observed for a time. And here you may already see I am getting among the mists, where old Dame Mystery, with her undefined lines, is ready to assume the forms forecast by brooding fancy. The gloom in the old room still hung thick, as the two maiden ladies moved slowly about, so like automatons, each preparing her cup of tea. So sternly had custom occupied the place of primary nature, that it would now have appeared more strange and out of joint for them to speak than to be silent. And so, as the minutes passed, the gray mist of the morning gave way to the struggling rays of the sun, and now there was something to be seen--nay, something that could not be unseen. Nor this the less by token that the eyes of both our Martha and Mary were fixed as if by a spell upon that part of the wall over the mantelpiece. There was hanging bodily, in the old frame, and radiant with the old light, the real picture of their mother, for the possession of which they had sighed for sixteen years. We may easily conceive that it could not fail of an effect, even as free from the connexion of any mystery as to how it came to be there. But the question, if put by either to herself or her neighbour, could not be answered in any way consistently with natural causes, for neither of them had been out of the room--nay, neither had been in a condition which could have been taken advantage of by any one who wished by a trick to take them by surprise. Then how catching the superstitious when it plays into the hand of our fears! As they looked with spell-bound eyes on that apparition, and read once more the expression in that blessed countenance that spoke peace and love,--reproof enough to those who for so many long years had disobeyed her injunctions to treat each other as sisters, and love each other even as she loved them and they her,--they never doubted but that some unseen hand placed that picture there for the end of chastening their rebellious hearts, and