“Perhaps,” replied Rose, “but it explains all my success, and yours. The help arrived precisely when we were at our wits’ end. Don’t you remember, that wet November night—how we talked of lost gifts, and inspiration? I believe he came then.”
“Yes, I remember that night well.”
“We were two wretched little painstaking amateurs, without one spark, or glimmer, of genius. Now we are ‘true artists’; even the wickedest critic admits this. The Helper has been our master, has taught us, and set his own work once more before the public, drawn by our feeble fingers; it is the hand of the dead reincarnated in ours—we are in tune with some unknown mystery.”
“Yes, and we had better keep the mystery to ourselves,” said Rose the practical, and she stood up, and put the sheet of paper in the fire.
“Do you think it wrong, Rosie?—are we what is called ‘possessed’?”
“No—did he not ask us to pray? And we will. Why should not a departed spirit show kindness, and give charity to others? You and I are the objects of his benevolence—but for him, God knows what would have become of us!”
After this experience, it became an everyday matter to carry on a little correspondence with the Helper, who proved to be the Hays’ mainstay for many months; but at last he gave notice of his departure, in these words:
“You can now walk, and work alone—and another sorely needs assistance.”
“For a picture?” wrote Josephine.
“Yes, an important picture, which may make his fortune. A picture like this,” and with a few telling strokes the pen rapidly sketched a desert scene, a sunset, and a great caravan, with many kneeling figures; in the foreground two horses and two men; in the far distance, a passing sandstorm. Under this sketch the pen wrote, ‘Good-bye.’