For a moment she looked at the people, and then with a smile of ineffable sweetness she vanished into nothingness, the tender smile seeming to remain even after all the rest had vanished. For several minutes everything was still, with that strange stillness which sometimes falls upon a whole community, without apparent reason, when every sense is alert, though nothing tangible is seen. The young newspaper man felt a lump rise in his throat, and two tears jumped suddenly from his eyes and rolled unheeded down his cheeks as he thought of the years of toil this woman had borne without thought or hope of recompense, and now she was so signally blest. The sight laid one more stone in the foundation of the resolves made this night as to his future. That the occasion was a solemn one, the silence and evident awe of the other ghosts was proof. Besides, the fading face was so glorified, and wore such a beatific expression that no one who saw it could doubt the fact that her season of penance was ended. With a smile of ineffable sweetness she vanished. Filled with these thoughts, and marveling at it all, the young man scarcely knew that all the tables had disappeared, when he found himself sitting alone on a chair in the middle of the immense room. He hastily rose to his feet and started off to find the Sociable Ghost, but he was nowhere to be seen, and so he entered into a conversation with a man who had been sitting silently at the table, and asked him if he could tell him how such a transformation had taken place and what had become of the bones, or had he been the victim of an optical illusion? The man replied: “No one knows the hour of his release until it comes, and when it does, all the bones and all other material parts fall into impalpable dust and go to help build more worlds. From now on the spirit is free from all hindrance, and it is to be supposed that it passes to a better sphere. That is all we know about it. We all hope for the hour of release, but only the Master can tell when we have earned the right.” Probably the man would have said more on the subject, had not the ghost of Peleg Eddy come along and stopped, saying angrily: “Aha! I have found you at last! You are the idiot that wrote that epitaph to weigh me down forever! And, you married my widow—” “You ought to pardon me the first on account of the last.” “You are a liar, sir—” Peleg Eddy interrupted the conversation right here, for the other ghost doubled up his fist and let it go, and it went in the direction of Peleg’s head, and that not being on very strong, owing to the fact that the bones were very small, the head rolled to the floor and on for some little distance, while there was a general shout of laughter at the mishap. Peleg ran after it and putting it under his arm for safety, said in trembling tones: