Miss Ludington's Sister

e aware that a lady standing at another counter was attentively regarding her. The lady in question was of about her own height and age, her hair being nearly white, like Miss Luding

delightedly, "Why, Sarah Cobb, where did you come from?" and for the next quarter of an hour the two ladies, quite oblivious of the clerks who were waiting on them, and the customers who were jostling them, stood ab

, "and I'm not going to let you escape me. You must come out with me to my house and st

oth to accept her friend's invitation, and it was arranged that Miss Ludington should send her carriage to meet her at one of the Brooklyn ferries the day following. Mi

ent, Miss Ludington finally bade her old school-mate g

particular. She had known Sarah ever since they both could walk, and during the latter part of their school life they had been inseparable. The sc

he ferry. She wanted to be with her and enjoy her surprise when she first saw the restore

ediately after entering the grounds, took a sharp turn round the corner of the gardener's cottage, which answered for a gatekeeper's lodge. The moment, however, it was out of sight from the highway it became transformed into a country road, with wide, grassy

her astonishment gave place to the liveliest interest and curiosity. The carriage was forthwith stopped and sent around to the stables, while the two friends went on foot through the village. Every house, every fence-corner, every lilac-bush or clump of hollyhocks, or row of currant-bushes in th

dington's flight. The general appearance of the old street, Mrs. Slater said, remained much the same, despite the changes which had dri

ss they came at last

entered the silent school-room and sat down in the self-same seats in which two maidens, so unlike them, yet linked to them by so strangely tender a tie, had reigned as school-room belles nearly half a century before. In hushed voices, with mois

int maps of that period whence they had received geographical impressions, strangely antiquated now. Along one side of the room ran a black-board, on which they had been wont to demonstrate their ignor

ingly. "I can remember myself as a girl, more or less distinctly, and can even be sentimenta

should you expect to realize what i

me person," resp

n regarded he

d not lose them all at once, as I did; but isn't it a little auda

ce was she, if I am not now,"

Ludington. "I remember her very well, and she was no more

admit that I have changed slightly in appearance in the forty odd years since we went to school at Hilton, and I'll admit tha

are a changed person, and that you are the same person. If you are a changed

riving at," said Mrs. Slater, calmly. "It se

the girls who sat here forty years and more ago are the same persons, notwithstanding we are so completely transformed without and wit

irls, then what has become

come of them, Sarah. It is what will become of us when we, in our turn, vanish from earth, and the places th

aimed Mrs. Slater, regarding

he girls who came before us. It is easier, as well as far sweeter, for me to believe that our youth is somewhere immortal, than that it has been withered, shrivel

er, and now the lengthening shadows on the school-room floor reca

he immortality of past selves which had so recently come to her, and especially how it had quite taken away the

d, as Miss Ludington, after taking her on a tour through

ind you of?" aske

eplied Mrs. Slater; "but how it e

, with a pleased smile. "I suppose you think it odd you

nly," replied

t of myself at seventeen, which I thought so much of after I lost my looks? Well, this portrait I had enlarged from that. I have

ld her something of his romantic devotion to the Ida of the picture. Paul, who from Miss Ludington had learned all there was to be known about the persons and places of old Hilton, entere

Slater's eyes were frequently drawn toward the picture over the fireplace, and some reference of hers to the immortelles in whi

dly sceptical. Paul grew eloquent in maintaining its truth and reasonableness, and, indeed, that it was the only intelligible theory of immortality that was possible. The idea that the same soul successively animated

ast self appearing to them. If there are such spirits, why have they never manifested themselves? No

ritualism is a fraud. The mediums merely follow the vulgar su

rk, of whom the papers are giving such wonderful accounts, and let them try to materialize for me the spirit of my youth. Probably they couldn't do it, but possibly they might; and a mighty little sight, Mr. De Ri

claimed Paul; and then he added, "I beg yo

parts of fraud. I really don't believe there is more. Now, as you think the mediums humbugs, and I am sure most of them are, their failure to accomplish anything would not shake your faith in your theory, and you would only have lost an evening and

turne

I thought there was any possibility of that, do you

considered the leading light just now, charges fifty dollars for a private séance. Now, fifty dollars, I suppose, does not seem a large sum to you, but it would be a great deal for a poor woman like me to spend. And yet if I believed th

s the floor once or twice, stood leaning his arm o

nd yourself? I mean, have you ever

hing about her. I have a friend, a Mrs. Rhinehart, who has recently lost her husband, and she

rceiving that she was not going to say anything more,

ay all have been a humbug, as I was prepared to believe it; but I assure you it was a curious business, and I haven't got over the impression which it made on me, yet. I'm not given to believing in things that claim to be supernatural, but I will admit that what I saw

if recalling in fancy the scene which she had described. Miss Ludington's hands trembled as they lay together in her lap, and

n," he said, quietly. "You need not think of going w

s Ludington, in a voice which she steadied with diff

. Legrand live?" Pau

I attended the séance I spoke of, and all I recall is that it was somewhere in th

the friend of whom you spoke, if it would not

y long in one place, and it is quite possible that this Mrs. Legrand may not be in the city now, But if I can get her address for y