The bed was liberally sprinkled with large gray moths.
My hostess shivered. "Come away, and let us shut the door. It's too horrible," she said.
During the remainder of my visit I was perfectly comfortable in my new room, and the curious fact must be stated that after I had left the moth-room the moths forsook it too. I could discern a pitying incredulity in the housemaid's attitude towards me afterwards. She had seen but two, and she did not believe in the drove.
My hostess and friend who had witnessed the phenomenon at once agreed that there was something more in it than an entomological curiosity. I would have given much for the opinion of a naturalist. What, I wonder, would he have made of that fat, gray flock sprinkling the bed? What species of moth would he have declared them to be?
I have searched in many books since and never found anything the least resembling them, and I retain my original, firm belief that they were nothing more or less than a flock of elementals, sent forth as a practical joke by a practiced magician on the other side.
CHAPTER XIX
"THE NEW JEANNE D'ARC"
Before writing on the above subject, which is proving to-day of absorbing interest to a very large number of people, Protestant as well as Catholic, I will point out a curious fact that is occultly connected with it.