he pale light flickered upon her features, I thought I could detect the
semblance of a smile. The splendor of her costume and the glittering gems
which shone upon her spotless robe gleamed through the darkness with an
almost supernatural brilliancy, and so beautiful did she look, so calm her
pale features, that as I opened and shut my eyes and rubbed my lids, I
scarcely dared to trust to my erring senses, and believe it could be
real. What could it mean? Whence this silence; this cold sense of awe
and reverence? Was it a dream; was it the fitful vision of a disordered
intellect? Could it be death? My eyes were riveted upon that beautiful
figure. I essayed to speak, but could not; I would have beckoned her
towards me, but my hands refused their office. I felt I know not what charm
she possessed to calm my throbbing brain and burning heart; but as I turned
from the gloom and darkness around to gaze upon her fair brow and unmoved
features, I felt like the prisoner who turns from the cheerless desolation
of his cell, and looks upon the fair world and the smiling valleys lying
sunlit and shadowed before him.

Sleep at length came over me; and when I awoke, the day seemed breaking,
for a faint gray tint stole through a stained-glass window, and fell in
many colored patches upon the pavement. A low muttering sound attracted me;
I listened, it was Mike's voice. With difficulty raising myself upon one
arm, I endeavored to see more around me. Scarcely had I assumed this
position, when my eyes once more fell upon the white-clad figure of the
preceding night. At her feet knelt Mike, his hands clasped, and his head
bowed upon his bosom. Shall I confess my surprise, my disappointment! It
was no other than an image of the blessed Virgin, decked out in all the
gorgeous splendor which Catholic piety bestows upon her saints. The
features, which the imperfect light and my more imperfect faculties had
endowed with an expression of calm, angelic beauty, were, to my waking
senses, but the cold and barren mockery of loveliness; the eyes, which my
excited brain gifted with looks of tenderness and pity, stared with no
speculation in them; yet contrasting my feelings of the night before, full
as they were of, their deceptions, with my now waking thoughts, I longed
once more for that delusion which threw a dreamy pleasure over me, and
subdued the stormy passions of my soul into rest and repose.

"Who knows," thought I, "but he who kneels yonder fe