Harriet Prescott Spofford

“ He worked out the foot-rest of the car and began to break with it the soil about the roots of the tree. And then he saw that the earth had been torn up by a thunderbolt fallen there not long since, stripping the bark off the tree, too, but making his work more easy.
"There's nothing there at all!" cried Mary. "It's all our imagination."
"There's nothing like effort," he replied. ”

“ And Mary began to have a strange foreboding about the main building, as of some baleful influence there that might harm the child. So her husband took the child with her and went all over the main building, and showed her there was nothing there but emptiness, not even gloom; for how could gloom live in a place flooded with sunshine through all its many windows? After the twin babies came, Mary had the clothes hung there to dry. ”

“ They began to go forward, turning the corner, coming out on the straight road to the marsh.
It was a season of low tides, and except for a short but terrific thunder-storm there had been no rain for weeks, so that the marsh had visibly shrunk. "There's no danger, we won't go out on the marsh, of course. That chauffeur, the Mad Lady's, must have lost control, he was going at such a horrific rate, they say."
"There is the big tree on the edge!" cried Mary, still in a tremor, her very voice shaking.
"Let us look. We will find some sticks and turn up the earth," said her husband. ”