nearly four o'clock
Come on , Pen ! '' `` Defiance to the powers of evil , '' laughed my poor soul-sick Penelope , lifting her glass . With a shudder I watched these two tragically led young women as they stood there , draped in white , and drank this sacrilegious toast ; then , heavy-hearted , I came away . It was nearly four o'clock when I reached my home and I was so exhausted by the emotions of the night that I lay down without undressing and almost immediately fell into a troubled sleep . Then , suddenly , I awoke with a start of alarm and a sense that a voice had called me . And , though my bedroom was dark , I distinctly saw a white vaporish form passing over me as if someone had blown a cloud of tobacco smoke in my face . Once before I had had this experience of a white form passing over me -- it was when my mother died .