I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan
daughter, but my tears fell over her hand. She
took them as signs of pity, and, in her infant
thankfulness, silently kissed me.

"Oh, my friend!" I murmured to Faber, "I
have much that I long to say to you—alone—
alone—come to my house with me, be at least
my guest as long as you stay in this town."

"Willingly," said Faber, looking at me more
intently than he had done before, and, with the
true eye of the practised Healer, at once soft
and penetrating.

He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word
in the ear of the little girl, she went on before
us, turning her head, as she gained the gate, for
another look at her father's grave. As we
walked to my house, Julius Faber spoke to me
much of this child. Her brothers were all at
school; she was greatly attached to his
nephew's wife; she had become yet more attached
to Faber himself, though on so short an
acquaintance; it had been settled that she was to
accompany the emigrants to Australia.

"There," said he, " the sum, that some munificent,
but unknown, friend of her father has
settled on her, will provide her no mean dower
for a colonist's wife, when the time comes for
her to bring a blessing to some other hearth
than ours." He went on to say that she had
wished to accompany him to L——- , in order to
visit her father's grave before crossing the wide
seas; " and she has taken such fond care of me
all the way, that you might fancy I were the
child of the two. I come back to this town,
partly to dispose of a few poor houses in it which
still belong to me, principally to bid you farewell
before quitting the Old World, no doubt
for ever. So, on arriving to-day, I left Amy by
herself in the churchyard while I went to your
house, but you were from home. And now I
must congratulate you on the reputation you
have so rapidly acquired, which has even surpassed
my predictions."

"You are aware," said I, falteringly, "of
the extraordinary charge from which that part
of my reputation dearest to all men has just
emerged?"

He had but seen a short account in a weekly
journal, written after my release. He asked details,
which I postponed.

Reaching my home, I busied myself to provide
for the comfort of my two unexpected
guests; strove to rally myself—to be cheerful.
Not till night, when Julius Faber and I were
alone together, did I touch on what was weighing
at my heart. Then, drawing to his side, I
told him all;—all of which the substance is
herein written, from the death scene in Dr.
Lloyd's chamber to the hour in which I had
seen Dr. Lloyd's child at her father's grave.
Some of the incidents and conversations which
had most impressed me, I had already committed
to writing, in the fear that, otherwise, my fancy
might forge for its own thraldom the links of
reminiscence which my memory might let fall
from its chain. Faber listened with a silence
only interrupted by short pertinent questions;
and when I had done, he remained thoughtful
for some moments; then the great physician
replied thus:

"I take for granted your conviction of the
reality of all you tell me, even of the Luminous
Shadow, of the bodiless Voice; but, before admitting
the reality itself, we must abide by the
old maxim, not to accept as cause to effect those
agencies which belong to the marvellous, when
causes less improbable for the effect can be rationally
conjectured. In this case are there not
such causes? Certainly there are——-"

"There are!"

"Listen; you are one of those men who
attempt to stifle their own imagination. But
in all completed intellect, imagination exists,
and will force its way; deny it healthful vents,
and it may stray into morbid channels. The
death-room of Dr. Lloyd deeply impressed your
heart, far more than your pride would own.
This is clear, from the pains you took to exonerate
your conscience, in your generosity to the orphans.
As the heart was moved, so was the
imagination stirred; and, unaware to yourself,
prepared for much that subsequently appealed
to it. Your sudden love, conceived in the very
grounds of the house so associated with recollections
in themselves strange and romantic;
the peculiar temperament and nature of the girl
to whom your love was attracted; her own
visionary beliefs, and the keen anxiety which infused
into your love a deeper poetry of sentiment,
—all insensibly tended to induce the imagination
to dwell on the Wonderful; and, in overstriving
to reconcile each rarer phenomenon to
the most positive laws of Nature, your very intellect
could discover no solution but in the Preternatural.

"You visit a man who tells you he has seen
Sir Philip Derval's ghost: on that very evening,
you hear a strange story, in which Sir Philip's
name is mixed up with a tale of murder, implicating
two mysterious pretenders to magic—-
Louis Grayle, and the Sage of Aleppo. The
tale so interests your fancy that even the glaring
impossibility of a not unimportant part of
it escapes your notice—- viz. the account of a
criminal trial (in which the circumstantial evidence
was more easily attainable than in all the
rest of the narrative, but) which could not legally
have taken place as told. Thus it is whenever the
mind begins, unconsciously, to admit the shadow
of the Supernatural; the Obvious is lost to the
eye that plunges its gaze into the Obscure. Almost
immediately afterwards you become acquainted
with a young stranger, whose traits of
character interest and perplex, attract yet revolt
you. All this time you are engaged in a physiological
work that severely tasks the brain, and
in which you examine the intricate question of
soul distinct from mind.

"And, here, I can conceive a cause deep-hid
amongst what metaphysicians would call latent
associations, for a train of thought which disposed
you to accept the fantastic impressions afterwards
made on you by the scene in the Museum
and the visionary talk of Sir Philip Derval.