The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1889-04-12

meet me in the evening as returned.
saw her sweet face shining under the
lamps as we drew up, but so fearfully
like my vision Of the night before that
hardly dared to think it real. In answer
to my hurried inquiry she said she had
been out in the rain on the previous
night, returning with friend from a
house where they had called, had STUN
bled and fallen across the railway, but
J had picked herself up and was safe and
| dry beneath the roof tree long and long
before either down train or up train
passed that way. She TESTED me on my
clairvoyance, then laughed that she filled
up my eye SO completely.
saw her standing there while we
backed down to switch off aganEs2m the
main track, gazing and smiling after me,
standing SO securely with her light, rust
ling figure, airy and supple as some glad
young white birch in the breeze; then we
Numbered by with our terrible tread, and
lost her! IF there had been a score of
faces on the track as we drove along I
should have seen none Of them that
night for brooding over and caressing in
my happy thought the pure and perfect
face that really saw beneath the flaring
station lamps.
had almost forgotten this incident of
my nightfaring-I mean, Of course, the
vision on the rails-when, some weeks
afterward precisely the same thing oc-
Cured.
1t was soft, starry night of the In
dian summer this time. There was a
ceaseless glimmer of harmless sheet
ightnings through the sky, the horizon
lifting every few moments with the in
nocent reflection Of some deadly storm
in the meridian beneath it. We were
making about our ordinary running,
when, like quick illumination, directly
in our path, the same obscurity. the same
resolving-there lay the Face!
knew as well now that it must be an
illusion as that was breathing being
did not essay any motion by which It
should be suffered to impede our prog
ress, but stared at it with fascinated
gaze. The beautiful face!-its great gray
eyes cleaning so softly up as the belch-
ing monster pounded down to dazzle
them blind with its fierce and blazing
headlight, to crush them from their
sockets with its remorseless wheels.
could no more help my hands lifting
then than my hearts beating.
In another instant the train was shiv-
ering with the shock of it's reverse. l
was off again, searching the plate-on
again, aware of my folly; and we spun
straightway along the track as Iif let
loose from a meteor. heard George
Rowe muttering at me in amazeAnent,
but made him no reply. At Brodkford
the conductor harangued me stofmily,
and babe George Rowe have dharge
over me. He thought that l was
drunken man, and well he might, for I
felt my face SO flushed, and my eyes 80
panied, that the latter may have aowed
like flames in bed of Goals, While my
brain burned and boiled, and dubbed,
till it seemed like bursting. / was, in
deed, well nigh beside myself.
wrote to Margaret Of this second &C.
currence, and asked her what it meant.
Was l really becoming out of my headp
Was even out of my head already? She
replied in much the same strain as be-
fore, testing and cheerful: but it was
like q transparent mask, and l could
clearly detect an anxiety and alarm on
her part beneath the whole of her playful
petition not to turn her into grave light
and will-o -the-wisp, nor to connect her
personality with such diabolical things
as the flames of the St. Elmo's fire that
every sailor sees on his topmast, and
which had doubtless thousand times
beheld running before me on the rails.
determined then that unless nv mind
were really affected l would take no
more notice of any renewal of this ap-
partition than would of the copper cents
and brass pins which adventurous school
boys were in the habit of placing upon
the track for the wheels to fatten out
into nothingness My resolutions, need
not say, were as worthless as the fat
tened pins, and quickly became paving
stones of that region where asphalt was
primevally found in use.
For the face haunted me-haunted me
30 that wonder at myself now, and be-
ieve that only the grace and goodness of