His sister shook her head; she was thinking of the vision seen by Sophie in the forest dell, but she deemed it best to be silent upon that subject at present. There was a small house under the shadow of the promontory, in which sails, fishing-nets, and rods, &c., were kept; into this house, for the present, Lieutenant Wilde conveyed the body, and locking the door, took possession of the key, and advising Emily to return to the hall, he went off to Churchill Point to summon the coroner. * * * * * “Ridiculous, my dear! absurd, preposterous! _utterly_ preposterous! A crazy woman wandering through the country, and saying that she is our minister’s wife! and you to believe it! I shall grow thoroughly ashamed of you, Miss Churchill. Why, don’t you know, my dear, that is always the way with these lunatic vagrants, to fancy themselves some great personage, _always_; all I wonder at, is that your maniac was so moderate—they are generally queens, nothing less will serve them; even old Suke Ennis, you know, is the President’s wife—and carries her bosom full of waste papers that she says are his letters. A strolling lunatic suddenly appears before you, in the full of the moon, announces herself as the wife of the most important man she knows of, flees away at his approach,—and _you_, upon the strength of her moon-struck madness, believe, or more probably _affect_ to believe her insane statement; you grow ridiculous. Oh! do not, for _your own_ reputation for good sense, mention this to any one else. I am _mortified_ at you, _alarmed_ for you.” This was the manner in which Mrs. Gardiner Green received the news of Sophie’s strange visitor from Miss Churchill’s lips, when they had been left alone together. “I do not think that she was a lunatic,” said Sophie, seriously. “I thought she spoke sense, truth, sad, sorrowful truth.” “‘Sense,’ ‘truth,’ the maddest of them can speak sense and truth sometimes; but her very _statement_ proves her lunacy—do not we all know better—don’t we know that the wife of Mr. Withers died two years ago?” “I think that is an impression that has been generally received, but I think that the opinion has no good foundation in fact; now that my mind fixes itself upon the subject, I remember that in his letter to Mr. May, he speaks of the ‘loss,’ never of the _death_ of his wife.”