“And where is the gate of death?” I asked in a sort of whisper, as we walked together, holding his hand very fast, and looking stealthily. He smiled sadly and said —

“When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagar’s eyes were opened in the wilderness, and she beheld a fountain of water, so shall each of us see the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed.”

For a long time after this walk I was very nervous; the more so for the awful manner in which Mrs. Rusk received my statement — with stern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation: “I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the wood with that limb of darkness. It is a mercy he did not show her the devil, or frighten her out of her senses, in that lonely place Does anyone know Steve well enough to call him on this!”

Of these Swedenborgians, indeed, I know no more than I might learn from good Mrs. Rusk’s very inaccurate talk. Two or three of them crossed in the course of my early life, like magic-lantern figures, the disk of my very circumscribed observation. All outside was and is darkness. I once tried to read one of their books upon the future state — heaven and hell; but I grew after a day or two so nervous that I laid it aside. It is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or fancied he saw amazing visions, which, so far from superseding, confirmed and interpreted the language of the Bible; and as dear papa accepted their ideas, I am happy in thinking that they did not conflict with the supreme authority of holy writ.

Leaning on my hand, I was now looking upon that solemn wood, white and shadowy in the moonlight, where, for a long time after that ramble with the visionary, I fancied the gate of death, hidden only by a strange glamour, and the dazzling land of ghosts, were situate; and I suppose these earlier associations gave to my reverie about my father’s coming visitor.
Chapter 4 Madame De La Rougierre
ON A SUDDEN, on the grass before me, stood an odd figure — a very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon, courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically.

I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrilly — I could not distinctly hear what through the window — and gesticulating oddly with her long hands and arms.