h,
looking after them, and I could see her plainly in her brocade gown,
with the impish flowers, a tall quaint cap, and a high lace frill at
her throat, whiter than any lace I had ever seen, with a glitter on
it; and there was a glitter on her face too. One of the other ladies
was dressed in velvet, and I thought she looked beautiful: their eyes
were all like sparks of fire. The gentlemen wore cloaks and ruffs, and
high-peaked hats with wide brims, such as I had seen in some very old
pictures which hung on the walls of the long west room. These were not
pilgrims or Puritans, but gay gentlemen; and soon I heard the noise of
their boats on the pebbles as they pushed off shore, and the splash of
the oars in the water. Lady Ferry waved her hand, and went in at the
door; and I found myself standing by the window in the chilly, cloudy
night: the opposite gable, the garden, and the river, were
indistinguishable in the darkness. I stole back to bed in an agony of
fear; for it had been very real, that dream. I surely was at the
window, for my hand had been on the sill when I waked; and I heard a
church-bell ring two o'clock in a town far up the river. I never had
heard this solemn bell before, and it seemed frightful; but I knew
afterward that in the silence of a misty night the sound of it came
down along the water.

In the morning I found that there had been a gale in the night; and
cousin Matthew said at breakfast time that the tide had risen so that
it had carried off two old boats that had been left on the shore to go
to pieces. I sprang to the window, and sure enough they had
disappeared. I had played in one of them the day before. Should I tell
cousin Matthew what I had seen or dreamed? But I was too sure that he
would only laugh at me; and yet I was none the less sure that those
boats had carried passengers.

When I went out to the garden, I hurried to the porch, and saw, to my
disappointment, that there were great spiders' webs in the corners of
the door, and around the latch, and that it had not been opened since
I was there before. But I saw something shining in the grass, and
found it was a silver knee-buckle. It must have belonged to one of the
ghostly guests, and my faith in them came back for a while, in spite
of the cobwebs. By and by I bravely carried it up to Madam, and asked
if it were hers. Sometimes she would not answer for a long time, when
one rudely broke in upon her reveries, and she hesitated now, loo