Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had given as to the whereabouts of the wanderer.  Her trances, just at this time, were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she had professed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly,—­the trance being apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question was pending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or was about to say, was gone.  The names and appearance of persons and places necessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficient distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother’s rather chimerical undertaking.  I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum.  Exactly what she herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew.  I confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar’s ghostly eyes forever on us.  One night I had to lock the poor thing into her garret-room before I could sleep.

Just three weeks from the day on which mother started for the West, the coach rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly up the walk.  The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight; the other, bent and worn, gray-haired and shallow and dumb, crawling feebly through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a glorious life might crawl back to its grave.

Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen.  “Children, your aunt has come home.  She is too tired to talk just now.  By and by she will be glad to see you.”

We took her gently upstairs, into the room where the lilies were mouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed.  She closed her eyes wearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word.

What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked and I never knew.  Once, as I passed the room, I saw,—­and have always been glad that I saw,—­through the open door, the two women lying with their arms about each other’s neck, as they used to do when they were children together, and above them, still and watchful, the wounded Face that had waited there so many years for this.

She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, and then one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned Face, her own quite still and smiling.

A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and left her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again to cradle the sister who had loved her.  Her name only, by mother’s orders, marked the headstone.

* * * * *

I have given you facts.  Explain them as you will.  I do not attempt it, for the simple reason that I cannot.