pillow with a shriek, gaze wildly round, trembling in
every limb, the dew starting on her brow, face well-nigh convulsed, teeth
chattering, and strange, incoherent words--

'A dream, only a dream!' she murmured, recovering consciousness.

'What was only a dream?' asked Miss Fennimore, one night.

'Oh, nothing!' but she still shivered; then striving to catch hold of the
broken threads of her philosophy, 'How one's imagination is a prey
to--to--what is it? To--to old impressions--when one is weak.'

'What kind of impressions?' asked Miss Fennimore, resolved to probe the
matter.

Bertha, whose defect of speech was greatly increased by weakness, was
long in making her answer comprehensible; but Miss Fennimore gathered it
at last, and it made her spirit quake, for it referred to the terrors
beyond the grave. Yet she firmly answered--

'Such impressions may not always result from weakness.'

'I thought,' cried Bertha, rising on her elbow, 'I thought that an
advanced state of civilization dispenses with sectarian--I mean
superstitious--literal threats.'

'No civilization can change those decrees, nor make them unmerited,' said
Miss Fennimore, sadly.

'How?' repeated Bertha, frowning. 'You, too? You don't mean that? You
are not one of the narrow minds that want to doom their fellow-creatures
for ever.' Her eyes had grown large, round, and bright, and she clutched
Miss Fennimore's hand, gasping, 'Say, not for ever!'

'My poor child! did I ever teach you it was not?'

'You thought so!' cried Bertha; 'enlightened people think so. O
say--only say it does not last!'

'Bertha, I cannot. God forgive me for the falsehoods to which I led you,
the realities I put aside from you.'

Bertha gave a cry of anguish, and sank back exhausted, damps of terror on
her brow; but she presently cried out, 'If it would not last! I can't
bear the thought! I can't bear to live, but I can't die! Oh! who will
save me?'

To Miss Fennimore's lips rose the words of St. Paul to the jailer.

'Believe! believe!' cried Bertha, petulantly, 'believe what?'

'Believe that He gave His Life to purchase your safety and mine through
that Eternity.'

And Miss Fennimore sank on her knees, weeping and hiding her face. The
words which she had gazed at, and listened to, in vain longing, had--even
as she imparted them--touched herself in their fulness. She had seen the
face of Truth, when, at Mrs. Fulmort's death-bed, she had heard Phoebe
spe