icacy of which even a Prussian soldier would call into question.
"I haven't attempted to tell you what I think of your Halden. It is impossible. I simply give myself over to a few days of happiness and rest; all too soon I shall have to face the busy world again.
"Most gratefully yours,
"Morris Davidson.
"P.S.—I have not yet seen the ghost-lady. I thought I heard her footstep last night in the hall and a rustling at my door. I opened it, half expecting to find a rose upon the threshold. I found nothing, saw nothing."
The letter was dated March 13th, and contained a pressed hepatica. Some two months later another letter came. It said:
"I am still here. My Italian journey melted into a Swiss sojourn. If I stay much longer I shall not dare to go away, I feel so safe under the care of these wonderful mountains. What words has one to describe them, with their fulness of content, of majesty and mystery? I go daily up the time-worn steps behind the castle, throw myself on the grass, count the poplar-trees rising from
the plain below, try to make out where earth ends and heaven begins as the white May clouds meet the snow-drifts on the mountain-tops. I am working a little again, but tramping a good deal more. I have not been so happy since I was a boy. In a certain sense I have died here, unaided by the apparition with the rose, unless, indeed, she has come in my sleep, and that of course would not count. I have died, because surely all that death can ever mean is the putting away of something no longer needed, and therefore we die daily—one day most of all. But although I have never seen the ghost-lady, I have every reason to have perfect faith in her existence. I was talking with our landlord's aged mother about it to-day. She carefully closed the door when the conversation turned in this direction, begging me never to mention the subject before the servants, and then in a half-whisper she gave me exactly the same description that you did in Berlin."
Early in June a third letter came:
"Will you believe me when I say I have not only seen Her, but Them; that I have sat with Them, and talked with Them—the lost ladies of the Hill-side
—with the Countess Maria Regina, the proud daughter, the mysterious sister? No, certainly you will not believe me.