ble, now
re-entered the room.

"Wat," said Robinson, "show us where we are to sleep. Mr. Butler, to my
thinking, it's time to be turning in."

Then throwing his rifle upon one arm, and Butler's holsters over the
other, the sergeant waited in the middle of the floor until Mary
Musgrove, at the order of Adair, took a candle in her hand, and beckoned
our travellers to follow her out at the door. The maiden conducted her
charge along the porch to the opposite end of the cabin, where she
pointed out their chamber. After bidding their pretty conductress "good
night," our travellers prepared themselves for that repose which their
wearied frames did not long seek in vain.

CHAPTER XIV.

SOMETHING VERY LIKE A DREAM.

It was after midnight, and the inmates of the woodman's cabin had been
some hours at rest, when Mary Musgrove's sleep was disturbed by strange
and unwonted alarms. She was dreaming of Arthur Butler, and a crowd of
pleasant visions flitted about her pillow, when, suddenly, clouds
darkened the world of her dream, and images of bloodshed caused her to
shudder. Horrid shapes appeared to her, marching with stealthy pace
through her apartment, and a low and smothered footfall seemed to strike
her ear like the ticking of a death-watch. The fright awakened her, but
when she came to herself all was still. Her chamber was at the opposite
end of the cabin from that where Butler and Robinson slept, and it was
separated from the room occupied by Lynch only by a thin partition of
boards. The starlight through her window fell upon the floor, just
touching, as it passed, the chair over which Mary had hung her clothes,
and lighting with a doubtful and spectral light the prominent points of
the pile of garments, in such manner as to give it the semblance of some
unearthly thing. Mary Musgrove had the superstition common to rustic
education, and, as her dream had already filled her mind with
apprehensions, she now trembled when her eye fell upon what seemed to
her a visitant from another world. For some moments she experienced that
most painful of all sufferings, the agony of young and credulous minds
when wrought upon by their horror of spectres in the night. Gradually,
however, the truth came to her aid, and she saw the dreaded ghost
disrobed of his terrors, and changed into a familiar and harmless
reality. But this night-fear was scarcely dissipated before she again
heard, what in her sleep had conjured up the train o