“ ‘Then you’re a greater fool than I took you for! Good evening!’ And he moved slightly toward the door, against which my chair firmly stood.
“ ‘Don’t go yet, for I want you to explain,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t you think he ought to?’ turning to me with a very peculiar earnestness expressed in her countenance, especially in her eyes—very peculiar eyes at all times, but lit up in the most extraordinary manner at that moment. ‘I think he ought to prove his statement, and not leave us in this state of uncertainty. It is positively cruel!’ And, as she spoke, her eye met mine, and fastened it as if the encountering glances were riveted together.
“There must be some magic in the soul that is only flashed forth on very rare occasions, else why did her glance so fix my gaze for ten seconds that I could not stir? At the end of that space of time the fascination ended, and, raising my eyes, I answered—
“ ‘Certainly! he ought to explain; and, of course,’ said I, turning toward the man—‘of course, you will explain yourself, and——’
“There was no man there! Not even a sign that he had been. He had disappeared, gone, utterly vanished—not through the window, for that was a clear fall of seventy feet to the ground, besides which it had been securely nailed down for over four months—not through the door, for my chair and back were against it!
“Mrs. Graham fainted, and fell prone upon the floor!
“I lived in Charlestown, and reached home rather early that evening. Not that I was frightened. Oh, no! but because home seemed cheerier than the office; for the weather was bitterly cold, and the storm-spirits were holding high, tempestuous revels in the common and the bay; and, ever and anon, as the shivering pedestrian jogged along, and turned the sharp corners of what is literally and emphatically, and in more senses than one, the most angular city in the world, the blast would meet him square in the face, side-ways, and all around him in the same blessed moment of time, no matter which way he headed; for a Boston snow-storm blows every way at once—here it is due north, around the corner it is south-east, behind you it is north-west; over the way it blows straight up, and in the middle of the street it blows straight down.
“It was hard work travelling the four miles to my home that night, for every step had to be wearily footed. True, there were street cars, but no man in Boston ever remembers one going the right way when most it was wanted; but everybody can find scores coming, when everybody is bent upon going.
“Well, after a perilous walk, I at last reached home, and gladly sat down to my comfortable supper of toast and tea in my snug little parlor—the same little parlor where I wrote my book and received the loan of money to publish it, which money I was afterwards deprived of by the financial acumen of as great a scoundrel as ever went loose upon the world.