第6章 THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST(2)

"We think we hear their horns," they cried.

"Don't you think we do?"

"It must be we do," I said."Aren't we very, very happy?"We all laughed softly.Then we kissed each other and Elsbeth led us out, her wand high in the air.

And so my feet found the lost path to Arcady.

The next day I was called to the Pacific coast, and duty kept me there till well into December.A few days before the date set for my return to my home, a letter came from Elsbeth's mother.

"Our little girl is gone into the Unknown,"she wrote -- "that Unknown in which she seemed to be forever trying to pry.We knew she was going, and we told her.She was quite brave, but she begged us to try some way to keep her till after Christmas.'My presents are not finished yet,' she made moan.

'And I did so want to see what I was going to have.You can't have a very happy Christ-mas without me, I should think.Can you arrange to keep me somehow till after then?'

We could not 'arrange' either with God in heaven or science upon earth, and she is gone."She was only my little godchild, and I am an old maid, with no business fretting over children, but it seemed as if the medium of light and beauty had been taken from me.

Through this crystal soul I had perceived whatever was loveliest.However, what was, was! I returned to my home and took up a course of Egyptian history, and determined to concern myself with nothing this side the Ptolemies.

Her mother has told me how, on Christmas eve, as usual, she and Elsbeth's father filled the stockings of the little ones, and hung them, where they had always hung, by the fire-place.They had little heart for the task, but they had been prodigal that year in their expenditures, and had heaped upon the two tiny boys all the treasures they thought would appeal to them.They asked them-selves how they could have been so insane previously as to exercise economy at Christ-mas time, and what they meant by not getting Elsbeth the autoharp she had asked for the year before.

"And now --" began her father, thinking of harps.But he could not complete this sentence, of course, and the two went on pas-sionately and almost angrily with their task.

There were two stockings and two piles of toys.Two stockings only, and only two piles of toys! Two is very little!

They went away and left the darkened room, and after a time they slept -- after a long time.Perhaps that was about the time the tiny boys awoke, and, putting on their little dressing gowns and bed slippers, made a dash for the room where the Christmas things were always placed.The older one carried a candle which gave out a feeble light.The other followed behind through the silent house.They were very impatient and eager, but when they reached the door of the sitting-room they stopped, for they saw that another child was before them.

It was a delicate little creature, sitting in her white night gown, with two rumpled funny braids falling down her back, and she seemed to be weeping.As they watched, she arose, and putting out one slender finger as a child does when she counts, she made sure over and over again -- three sad times -- that there were only two stockings and two piles of toys! Only those and no more.

The little figure looked so familiar that the boys started toward it, but just then, putting up her arm and bowing her face in it, as Elsbeth had been used to do when she wept or was offended, the little thing glided away and went out.That's what the boys said.

It went out as a candle goes out.

They ran and woke their parents with the tale, and all the house was searched in a wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and tumult! But nothing was found.For nights they watched.But there was only the silent house.Only the empty rooms.They told the boys they must have been mistaken.But the boys shook their heads.

"We know our Elsbeth," said they."It was our Elsbeth, cryin' 'cause she hadn't no stockin' an' no toys, and we would have given her all ours, only she went out -- jus' went out!"Alack!

The next Christmas I helped with the little festival.It was none of my affair, but I asked to help, and they let me, and when we were all through there were three stockings and three piles of toys, and in the largest one was all the things that I could think of that my dear child would love.I locked the boys'

chamber that night, and I slept on the divan in the parlor off the sitting-room.I slept but little, and the night was very still -- so wind-less and white and still that I think I must have heard the slightest noise.Yet I heard none.Had I been in my grave I think my ears would not have remained more unsaluted.

Yet when daylight came and I went to un-

lock the boys' bedchamber door, I saw that the stocking and all the treasures which I had bought for my little godchild were gone.

There was not a vestige of them remaining!

Of course we told the boys nothing.As for me, after dinner I went home and buried myself once more in my history, and so inter-ested was I that midnight came without my knowing it.I should not have looked up at all, I suppose, to become aware of the time, had it not been for a faint, sweet sound as of a child striking a stringed instrument.It was so delicate and remote that I hardly heard it, but so joyous and tender that Icould not but listen, and when I heard it a second time it seemed as if I caught the echo of a child's laugh.At first I was puzzled.

Then I remembered the little autoharp I had placed among the other things in that pile of vanished toys.I said aloud:

"Farewell, dear little ghost.Go rest.

Rest in joy, dear little ghost.Farewell, farewell."That was years ago, but there has been silence since.Elsbeth was always an obe-dient little thing.