I remained motionless but an instant, long enough, however, to see the specter gather itself into a compact form, flash upward and disappear. Then, with a mighty effort, I pulled myself together and bounded out of bed.
“Oh,” my wife cried, sitting up, “did you see it?”
“See what, dear?” I asked.
“Just now something white seemed to come down, with arms outstretched, as if to take little Helen away. I am sure I was not asleep.”
“You must have been,” I answered. “I was wide awake all along and did not see anything. The room is quite empty.”
“Ugh,” she shuddered, “what a terrible dream!”
There was no sleep for me the rest of that night. For hours I sat in the living-room, trying to fathom the mystery that I had beheld. I knew it could not have been imagination, for my wife had seen it also. There was no accounting for it.
And I am just as much in the dark now as I was then. God only knows what it was that my wife and I saw that night! Perhaps it was a matriculated spirit from the Valley of Death, after all.
In any event, Baby Helen died the next day.
OWEN KING.