"You must tell me all about it," said she. "How did you find these things? Who brought them? Who is the thief? How did he get in the house? Does he come down chimney?" and a host of other questions.
"I'll tell you all about it to-night," said Mr. G. "It is a long story; but first the girls must be called to see the lost treasures now restored." And the daughters were called up. To their queries, uttered amidst the profoundest astonishment, as to how, and when, etc., the treasures were brought back, and who was the thief, and if it was some Catholic, who had disgorged the stolen goods through the confessional, Mr. G. only answered, slyly winking at the spiritualistic daughter, "It was through the means of a first-rate 'medium' that the things were restored."
"There, there," said the daughter, too serious to understand her father's irony, "I could have told you so. What do you think now of spiritualism, father?"
"O, I don't know," said he in reply. "There are a great many strange things in the world, that's a fact." But he would not promise to ever tell them how the things got back, and the ladies went to assorting them, and commenting on each article. It was a novel sight to see the eagerness with which they grasped at this or that article as it turned up,—the long-lost treasures found.
I left the house duly that day, and I understood from Mr. G., who called on me three or four days after, that when he told his wife that night what he had seen, and how she looked, and so forth, when moving about so slyly, that she had a "great crying spell" over it, and did not wish the daughters to be informed of the secret state of things; and that for fear the somnambulistic state should come upon her again, she tied her arm or foot to the bedstead, in order to be awakened if she should attempt to get out of bed. But she had had no more attacks of the disease.
"Perhaps her severe crying broke it," said he.
I made many inquiries of Mr. G. about his wife's habits in life, her general health, her peculiar troubles, if she had any, by way of resolving this mystery of the kleptomania connected with the somnambulism; and from all I could learn, I believe that she was one of the most conscientious and best of mortals in her normal state, and I was led to believe that the kleptomania, if not the somnambulism, was caused by diseases, though slight ones, peculiar to the female sex; but why these came on so late in life, (for Mrs. Garretson was sixty-three years old,) I cannot conceive, but leave that for the doctors to decide.