“I think, my dear, it was only the shadow cast by my horse as it came down the road.” “Oh, no, no, it was there!” Mark looked distressed. “Alice, I shall not dare leave you alone again while your nerves are in this state. Do you know that there has been nothing here but spectres of your excited imagination. Since when have you conjured gruesome hobgoblins out of the darkness? You never saw such things before, did you?” Alice hid her face in his bosom. “Yes, Mark, many times. They are always about me. When I walk they come up behind me and I hear their padding footsteps following me. They even pull my hair sometimes at night when I cannot sleep. Oh, I cannot bear it!” Mark frowned, and chewed his mustache reflectively, but he repressed the words that came to his lips. “My dear child, I am home with you now.” “Yes, Mark, and I am so—so—glad! But you will go away and then they will come again.” “I wish you might go when I do. You are nearly ill with nervous prostration. You should see a doctor right away.” “O, no, Mark! Not a doctor! I am not sick!” “What has caused this trouble, Alice? I do not know unless it is that miserable hound Russell. Can you not believe me when I tell you this is all a mere delusion of the senses? You have thought and thought over, and allowed your mind to dwell upon that wretched _ism_ until it has nearly shipwrecked you. It was an evil day when that villain darkened our door.” And Mark ground his teeth in impotent wrath. “But come, let us have a light and drive away the spirits of darkness.” “But, Mark, dear,” said Alice, as she arose and lighted a lamp, “can you not see that, to me, it is truth? I really see and hear them, and if it were not for these hideous ones—” “They are _all_ hideous—the whole doctrine is hideous, my dear, and only such as an unbalanced mind can conceive of,” he said hastily. “For my sake,—for God’s sake,—try and use some reason and judgment in the matter! You used to feel different from this—you, the little fearless woman of five years ago. I was so proud of you for your bravery, as became a soldier’s wife. You were all right until that man came here—until that serpent came into our Eden. Now you are frightened, and faint at your own shadow. But forgive me, dear, I didn’t come home to scold you. I am sure it is because you are not well and your nerves are to blame for it all. Queer things, these nerves, to play us such pranks. You are better, are you not?” Alice turned her face, still pale and wan, toward him, and said in a voice yet unsteady: “We will not talk of it any more. It is too dreadful.” “No, we will choose pleasanter themes. I have some news for you. I have received a letter from my sister Elinor, and she thinks of coming to make us a visit. She will have a fine rest here after her round of society life.” “But I thought she was in California.”