Shortly after her advent we were all asked down to W----, to help
celebrate their happiness, and incidentally to christen the new dinner
set. We were not a little surprised at finding Kate so pale and Tom
rather distrait. However, after a delightful dinner, that should have
filled with pleasure the most exacting bride, we adjourned to the
piazza, leaving the men to the contemplation of their cigars. We were
enthusiastic in our praise of the house, and congratulated Kate in
securing such a prize, when, to our horror, she burst into tears, and
said: “Oh, girls, it’s a dreadful place; it’s haunted!” and then
tearfully proceeded with the details, until we all felt creepy and
suggested the parlor and lights. It was not until long afterwards that Kate discovered that Tom had also
related the “ghost story” to the men, that evening, to which Ned Harris
had said, laconically, “Rats,” and Bob Shaw laughingly remarked, “Tom,
old chap, you really shouldn’t take your nightcap so strong.”

About the first of July the climax came. The ghost walked again, this
time taking not only the remaining pepper-pot, but also a silver
salt-cellar. Evidently he had a penchant for small articles, but unlike
former times, everything on the sideboard was in the greatest disorder. Aunt Julia’s salad bowl was found on the floor, and not far away the
cheese-dish, with its contents scattered about. This time one of the
windows was found half open. A week later a note came to me from Kate,
saying that she and Tom had gone to Saratoga to spend the remainder of
the season with her mother. The following spring Tom received a note and parcel from Mr. B----, the
owner of the house at W----, which read as follows:

     DEAR MR. HOWARD: I send you by express three articles of silver,
     which my wife suggests may belong to you, as they are marked with
     your initials, namely, two silver pepper-pots and a salt-cellar;
     they were found, the other day, during the process of spring house
     cleaning, in a rat hole, behind the sideboard. I forgot to have the
     holes stopped up last spring, or to caution you against the water
     rats; the great fellows will get in, you know. Kind regards to Mrs.
     Howard. Very truly,

JOHN B----. The next season the “Ghost Club” was organized, the badge being a small
silver rat, bearing proudly aloft a tiny pepper-pot. We thoughtfully
offered Tom the presidency, but he declined, with offended dignity, from
the effects of which I think he will never fully recover. THE DEAD WOMAN’S PHOTOGRAPH. Virgil Hoyt is a photographer’s assistant up at St. Paul, and a man of a
good deal of taste. He has been in search of the picturesque all over
the West, and hundreds of miles to the north in Canada, and can speak
three or four Indian dialects, and put a canoe through the rapids. That
is to say, he is a man of an adventurous sort and no dreamer. He can
fight well and shoot well and swim well enough to put up a winning race
with the Indian boys, and he can sit all day in the saddle and not dream
about it at night. Wherever he goes he uses his camera. “The world,” Hoyt is in the habit of saying to those who sit with him
when he smokes his pipe, “was created in six days to be photographed. Man--and especially woman--was made for the same purpose. Clouds are not
made to give moisture, nor trees to cast shade. They were created for
the photographer.”

In short, Virgil Hoyt’s view of the world is whimsical, and he doesn’t
like to be bothered with anything disagreeable. That is the reason that
he loathes and detests going to a house of mourning to photograph a
corpse. The horribly bad taste of it offends him partly, and partly he
is annoyed at having to shoulder, even for a few moments, a part of
someone’s burden of sorrow. He doesn’t like sorrow, and would willingly
canoe 500 miles up the cold Canadian rivers to get rid of it. Nevertheless, as assistant photographer, it is often his duty to do this
very kind of thing. Not long ago he was sent for by a rich Jewish family at St. Paul to
photograph the mother, who had just died. He was very much put out, but
he went. He was taken to the front parlor, where the dead woman lay in
her coffin. It was evident that there was some excitement in the
household and that a discussion was going on, but Hoyt wasn’t concerned,
and so he paid no attention to the matter. The daughter wanted the coffin turned on end, in order that the corpse
might face the camera properly, but Hoyt said he could overcome the
recumbent attitude and make it appear that the face was taken in the
position it would naturally hold in life, and so they went out and left
him alone with the dead. The face was a strong and positive one, such as may often be seen among
Jewish matrons. Hoyt regarded it with some admiration, thinking to
himself that she was a woman who had been used to having her own way. There was a strand of hair out of place, and he pushed it back from her
brow. A bud lifted its head too high from among the roses on her breast
and spoiled the contour of the chin, so he broke it off. He remembered
these things later very distinctly and that his hand touched her bare
face two or three times. Then he took the photographs and left the house. He was very busy at the time and several days elapsed before he was able
to develop the plates. He took them from the bath, in which they had
lain with a number of others, and went to work upon them. There were
three plates, he having taken that number merely as a precaution against
any accident. They came up well, but as they developed he became aware
of the existence of something in the photograph which had not been
apparent to his eye. The mysterious always came under the head of the
disagreeable with him, and was therefore to be banished, so he made only
a few prints and put the things away out of sight. He hoped that
something would intervene to save him from attempting an explanation. But it is a part of the general perplexity of life that things do not
intervene as they ought and when they ought, so one day his employer
asked him what had become of those photographs. He

[Illustration: “_They left him alone with the dead._”]

tried to evade him, but it was futile, and he got out the finished
photographs and showed them to him. The older man sat staring at them a
long time. “Hoyt,” said he, at length, “you’re a young man, and I suppose you have
never seen anything like this before. But I have.