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He started froed stare doards
"Oh yes, yes," he said; "they'rethey're lovely Maggie, the grave's all right, isn't it: the mound, I mean?"
At first she hardly understood
"Oh yeswhat do you hed, whether in relief or not she did not know
"Onlyonly I have heard ofat the sides But this one--"
"Oh yes," interrupted the girl "But this was very bad yesterday What's the matter, Laurie?"
He had turned his face with some suddenness, and there was in it a look of such terror that she herself was frightened
"What were you saying, Maggie?"
"It was nothing of any iirl hurriedly "It wasn't in the least disfigured, if that--"
"Maggie, will you please tell rave was yesterday? When was it put right?"
"II noticed it when I brought the chrysantheround was sunk a little, and cracks were showing at the sides I told the sexton to put it right He seems to have done it Laurie, why do you look like that?"
He was staring at her with an expression thatShe would not have been surprised if he had burst into a fit of laughter It was horrible and unnatural
"Laurie! Laurie! Don't look like that!"
He turned suddenly away and left her She hurried after him
On the way to the house he told her the whole story froether in the little sht of Laurie's holidays He was to go back to town next hly miserable week She had had to keep her promise not to tell Mrs Baxter--not that that lady would have been ofwould be a relief--and things really were not serious enough to justify her telling Father Mahon
To her the misery lay, not in any belief she had that the spiritualistic claim was true, but that the boy could be so horribly excited by it She had gone over the arguestions as to the earlier part of the story, and suggesting herself what seemed to her the most sensible explanation of the final detail Graves did sink, she said, in two cases out of three, and Laurie was as aware of that as herself Why in the world should not this then be attributed to the same subconscious mind as that which, in the hypnotic sleep--or whatever it was--had given voice to the rest of his iinations?