 Harry Nichols' vision is one of those stories which carries within itself the ring of truth. For the facts of the case are so very strange, so hard to imagine, that one senses immediately they are not the products of imagination. On a certain day in the year 1867, Harry Nichols, a commercial traveler, received an urgent message from his mother for his sister Dorothy was critically ill. But when Harry arrived in his native city, his sister was dead. And on the morning after his return, Harry descended the stairs just in time to see his mother emerge from the parlor, closing the door quickly behind her. The face was white and drawn. Mother, how'd north the manner? Why, why nothing Harry, I simply went in and when I saw Dorothy lying there, I broke down. Dorothy Nichols was carried to her grave. And it was not until that day in August of 1876, nine years later, that he had occasion to think seriously of his sister again. His present trip had been unusually successful and at noon on the day in question, he went directly to his room and sat down to make out a report. A brilliant shaft of sunlight streamed through the window and fell across his desk. And then suddenly, a shadow came between him and the window, the shadow of a woman. Harry Nichols glanced up and his pen dropped from his hand. The love of heaven, Dorothy! She sat quietly in the chair that is left, her hand resting on the desk. He could see her face distinctly. She looked just as she had looked ten years before, except for a strange and unfamiliar line that marred her cheek. Dorothy, my dear. Dorothy, wait! Good Lord. She vanished. The following morning, he found himself at the breakfast table with his mother. I don't want to upset your mother, but mother, I saw Dorothy yesterday. You saw her? Yes, she came to me in my hotel room. She sat down beside me and stayed for a moment, and then she disappeared. Harry, don't be foolish. We don't see the dead. But if that's the case, mother, why didn't I picture her exactly the way she used to look? Why had something happened to her face? A face? There was a mark on it, a long, thin line, clear across her right cheek. Harry, you're right. You did see her then. What do you mean? That morning, the morning after she died, I came out of the parlor, remember? I never told anybody, and I covered up what I'd done so that nobody could tell when I was combing her hair. I dropped the brush, and when I bent down to pick it up, my hand slipped, and I scratched her right cheek with my ring. Yes, such an admixture of the simple and the homely, with the strange and the supernatural could scarcely be fabricated. That Harry Nichols did see his sister nine years after her death, that the mark he saw on her cheek was the mark his mother's ring had made as she lay in her coffin. These are facts, facts incredible but true.