for her near Herkimer, and a wool cap, trimmed about with a broad band of mink fur, and a long crocheted woolen comforter about my neck, I was as well-dressed a boy for a winter’s day as a body need look for.  I took a look at myself in the glass, and felt that even at the first glance, my mother would feel that in casting her lot with me she would be choosing not only the comfort of living with her only son but the protection of one who had proved himself a man.

I glowed with pride as I thought of our future together, and of all I would do to make her life happy and easy.  I never was a better boy in my life than on that winter evening when I went up the hilly street from the tavern in Madison to the place on a high bluff overlooking a sheet of ice, stretching away almost as far as I could see, which they told me was Fourth Lake, to the house in which I was informed Doctor Rucker lived—­a small frame house among stocky, low burr oak trees, on which the dead leaves still hung, giving forth a dreary hiss as the bitter north wind blew through them.

I knocked at the door, and was answered by a red-haired young woman, with a silly grin on her face, the smirk flanked on each side with cork-screw curls which hung down over her bright blue dress; which, as I could see, was pulled out at the seams under her round and shapely arms.  She put out a soft and plump hand to me, but I did not take it.  She looked in my face, and shrank back as if frightened.

“Where’s Rucker?” I asked; but before I had finished the question he came forward from the other room, clothed in dirty black broadcloth, his patent-medicine-pedler’s smile all over his face, with a soiled frilled shirt showing back of his flowered vest, which was unbuttoned except at the bottom, to show the nasty finery beneath.  He had on a broad black scarf filling the space between the points of his wide-open standing collar, and sticking out on each side.  I afterward recalled the impression of a gold watch-chain, and a broad ring on his finger.  He was quite changed in outward appearance from the poverty-stricken skunk I had once known; but was if anything more skunk-like than ever:  yet I had to look twice to be sure of him.

“I am exceedingly glad to see you in the flesh,” said he, coming forward with his hand stuck out—­a hand which I stared at but never touched—­“exceedingly glad to see you, my young brother.  I have had a spiritual vision of you.  Honor us by coming in by the fire!”

“Where’s my mother?” I asked, still standing in the open door.

Rucker started at the sound of my voice, which had changed from the boy’s soprano into a deep bass—­much deeper than it is now.  It was the hoarse croak of the hobbledehoy.

The young woman had shrunk back behind him now.

“Your mother?” said he, in a sort of panther-like purr.  “A spirit has been for three days seeking to speak to a lost child through my daughter.  Come in, and let us see.  Let us see if my daughter can not pierce the mysteries of the unseen in your case.  Come in!”