"But what is it?"

"We mustn't keep him," urged Barbara.

"No, I ain't goin' to be kep'. 'T won't do. I donno what it is. It's a
kind of a turn. He's comin' partly out of it; but it's bad. He had a
kind of a warnin' once before. It's his head. They're afraid it's
appalectic, or paralettic, or sunthin'."

Robert looked very sober. He quite passed by the wonder of the gale,
that another time would have stirred him to most lively speech. Robert
"thought a good deal," as he expressed it, of Grandfather Holabird.

Harry Goldthwaite came through the brown room with his hat in his
hand. How he ever found it we could not tell.

"I'll go with him," he said. "You won't be afraid now, will you,
Barbara? I'm _very_ sorry about Mr. Holabird."

He shook hands with Barbara,--it chanced that she stood
nearest,--bade us all good night, and went away. We turned back
silently into the brown room.

We were all quite hushed from our late excitement. What strange things
were happening to-night!

All in a moment something so solemn and important was put into our
minds. An event that,--never talked about, and thought of as little, I
suppose, as such a one ever was in any family like ours,--had yet
always loomed vaguely afar, as what should come some time, and would