Page:Hallowe'en festivities (1903).djvu/116

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112
WERNER'S READINGS No. 31.

that his wife was 'too fanciful.'" Things continued in this way until Christmas, 1869. The husband and wife went upstairs to their chamber early, about 9.30, and the husband went immediately to bed. Their baby girl, however, usually awoke about this time and after drinking some warm milk would sleep for the rest of the night. As she was still sleeping Mrs. P. lay down on the outside of the bed, wrapped in her dressing-gown, waiting for her to wake and thinking over the arrangements for the following day. The door was locked and the lamp was burning brightly on a chest of drawers at the opposite side of the room. Suddenly she saw standing at the foot of the bed, between her and the light, the figure of a man dressed in naval uniform and wearing a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes. As his back was to the light his face was in the shadow. She spoke to her husband, saying, "Willie, who- is this?" Mr. P. turned and looked in astonishment at the strange visitor, crying out, "What on earth are you doing here, sir?" The apparition slowly drew itself erect and said in a commanding but very reproachful voice, "Willie! Willie!" The husband immediately sprang out of bed and moved toward the figure as if to attack it, when it moved quietly away in the opposite direction from the door and disappeared as it were into the wall. As it passed the lamp a deep shadow fell upon the room, as if a material person had intervened between the light and the spectators. Mr. P. instantly took the lamp and unlocking the door made a thorough search of the house. When he came back he informed his wife that the apparition was that of his father, who had been dead fourteen years. Early in life he had been in the navy, but his son had only once or twice seen him in his uniform. Mrs. P. had never seen her husband's father. Later Mr. P. became very ill and revealed the fact that he had been on the eve of acting upon the advice of evil associates, and had, indeed, already done some things which later brought sorrow to the family, when his father's warning voice had called him back from the brink of the precipice. Mr. P. confirms his wife's narrative in all particulars.