The Argosy — page 194: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Mrs. Raven’s Temptation, 177 her gift altogether: that what she did, she did for love—to help people, never for money.” “Come, that looks honest. What next, James?” ‘“ And at last she promised that she’d do her best by-and-by. And a precious puzzling best it is, Giles says. Yesterday afternoon, when all was quiet about the place, being Sunday, the clear-voyer had ’em up to her room, Worsfold and his wife both, with the blinds pulled close down, and she said the fit was coming on and presently she’d go off quite insensible, and in that state tell them what they wanted to know. Sure enough she did go off, and began to talk in her sleep as it were, and they both listened, all in a fright like, to what she said. She lay back with her eyes shut, giving one or two little snores or gasps; and the missis she crept to the door and let in Dolly the maid, and Giles himself stood all eager to hear outside.” “Best to have witnesses in such unearthly doings,” nodded Sims. ‘They all sat as still as mice,” continued James, ‘till'she begarr to mutter. And then, Giles thinks they got more than they bar- gained for. For not only did the clear-voyer tell of the missis’s brother: that went to sea, but she told why he went—to get out of the way after stealing the old schoolmaster’s hens. Which was true enough.” ‘My patience!” ejaculated Fanny. James went on. “The queer thing was, she didn’t tell things right plain out, but said she saw him among birds in a yard—and then running round a corner and looking, scared, behind him; and then on a big ship; and last of all, lying stretched out, under a great tree, of some strange sort such as she’d never seen before. But more than that. She told how Worsfold’s father had been drowned in a mill-dam—a noisy water with a big wheel going round, she called it. She even let on how he’d been drinking too much before it happened. Giles. said his blood ran cold, for he thought she might be reading out next how he went to the cellar last Christmas and helped himself to the brandy: and Dolly, he says, looked on her part awful queer.” James’s present listeners did not know what to make of this, or how to take it. ‘Is that all?” they asked. ‘No, it is not all,” answered the boy, impressively. ‘For she went on, talking about the evil in the air, that which is past and that which is coming : and next she seemed to see a tall figure that walks at night between the Court and the cottage—and Giles says there couldn’t well be any mistake that she meant father’s cottage. It had walked at times for years and years, she said, and it wasn’t laid yet, and no living mortal could foresee when it would be.” Mrs. Sims, taking the bacon-dish from the table at the moment, let it drop in consternation. ‘“‘Did she speak of ¢haf, James? Mercy preserve us! Did she say—did she say what the figure was like ?” “Not much of that, I think,” answered the lad. ‘Only that he VOL. XXXHI. N Conniclooolks (SO)