Page:The Eyes of Max Carrados.pdf/32

xxviii her life she showed signs of emotion—her eyes actually filling with tears. . ..

"While making a visit at Brewster, Massachusetts, she one day accompanied my friend and me through the graveyard. She examined one stone after another, and seemed pleased when she could decipher a name. She smelt of the flowers, but showed no desire to pluck them; and, when I gathered a few for her, she refused to have them pinned on her dress. When her attention was drawn to a marble slab inscribed with the name in relief, she dropped upon the ground as though looking for something, then turned to me with a face full of trouble, and asked, 'Where is poor little Florence?' I evaded the question, but she persisted. Turning to my friend, she asked, 'Did you cry loud for poor little Florence?' Then she added: 'I think she is very dead. Who put her in big hole?' As she continued to ask these distressing questions, we left the cemetery. Florence was the daughter of my friend, and was a young lady at the time of her death; but Helen had been told nothing about her, nor did she even know that my friend had had a daughter. Helen had been given a bed and carriage for her dolls, which she had received and used like any other gift. On her return to the house after her visit to the cemetery, she ran to the closet where these toys were kept, and carried them to my friend, saying, 'They are poor little Florence's.' This was true, although we were at a loss to understand how she guessed it."

"Muscular variation" would rather seem to be capable of explaining away most of the occult phenomena if this is it. But at all events the latest intelligence of Miss Keller is quite tangible and undeniably "in the picture." According to Who's Who in America, she