le effect. As the villagers quitted the
dwelling with their dead burden, the last of them who went out left her
in her solitude, still speechless, still weeping, as they had found her
at first.

Days passed, and she sent no message to any one. Weeks elapsed, and the
idlers who waited about the woodland paths where they knew that she was
once wont to walk with her companion, never saw her, watch for her as
patiently as they might. From haunting the wood, they soon got on to
hovering round the cottage, and to looking in stealthily at the window.
They saw her sitting on the same seat that she had always occupied, with
a vacant chair opposite; her figure wasted, her face wan already with
incessant weeping. It was a dismal sight to all who beheld it--a vision
of affliction and solitude that sickened their hearts.

No one knew what to do; the kindest-hearted people hesitated, the
hardest-hearted people dreaded to disturb her. While they were still
irresolute, the end was at hand. One morning a little girl, who had
looked in at the cottage window in imitation of her elders, reported,
when she returned home, that she had seen the lady still sitting in her
accustomed place, but that one of her hands hung strangely over the arm
of the chair, and that she never moved to pick up her pocket-handkerchief,
which lay on the ground beside her. At these ominous tidings, the
villagers summoned their resolution, and immediately repaired to the
lonesome cottage in the wood.

They knocked and called at the door--it was not opened to them. They
raised the latch and entered. She still occupied her chair; her head was
resting on one of her hands; the other hung down, as the little girl had
told them. The handkerchief, too, was on the ground, and was wet with
tears. Was she sleeping? They went round in front to look. Her eyes were
wide open; her drooping hand, worn almost to mere bone, was cold to the
touch as the waters of the valley-stream on a winter's day. She had died
in her wonted place; died in mystery and in solitude as she had lived.

They buried her where they had buried her companion. No traces of the
real history of either the one or the other have ever been discovered
from that time to this.

Such is the tale that was related to us of the cottage in the valley of
Nighton's Keive. It may be only imagination; but the stained roofless
walls, the damp clotted herbage, and the reptiles crawling about the
ruins, give the place a gloo