As I turned in at the lodge gate I noticed, without any particular interest, a woman walking in front of me, but in a very few moments I began to pay more attention to her obvious peculiarities. She was about twenty-five to thirty feet ahead of me, moving in the same direction, and the view I had of her back began to puzzle me. On that decidedly chilly morning she wore a white muslin dress, a material never used out of doors even in summer in that northern clime. Over her shoulders floated something mauve and flimsy, and on her head was what looked like an old-fashioned poke-bonnet.
Her back looked young, and yet she was a creature of a bygone century, and knowing every one within a twenty-mile radius of where I walked I speculated as to who she could possibly be.
Perhaps what puzzled me most was how she had managed to avoid the attention of the village children, who would at once have been alive to the novelty of her whole appearance. I looked forward to hearing all about her at the big house, and as seemed highly probable, meeting her face to face and obtaining an introduction to her.
Then it suddenly occurred to me to overtake her and pass her; we were both walking very slowly. I at once quickened my steps, but somehow I never seemed to gain on her. Even this did not rouse in me the faintest suspicion of being in the presence of a disembodied soul, it merely sharpened my curiosity and urged me to greater efforts.
I moved from the road to the grass which I calculated would deaden the sound of my footsteps, then I began to run.
Still no success! The lady never turned her head to right or left, but was clearly aware of my pursuit, for apparently without the least effort she kept her distance from me.
At the moment when I was feeling rather baffled and very much puzzled I caught sight of my friend, N., in the distance coming to meet me. "Ah!" I thought, as I at once slowed down to draw breath, "she will have to pass her and she'll tell me what her face is like."
I kept eyes and attention closely fixed on the two figures as they drew nearer and nearer to one another. Now the stranger appeared to be exactly at an equal distance between us, when, lo! she simply vanished as utterly and entirely as the electric light one switches off in a room. One second there she was, perfectly and clearly visible, the next second, there she was not. I looked foolishly around, though I knew that neither to right or left was there any hiding-place, moreover my eyes had been fully upon her when she vanished, flicked out--