y came thronging--for no JESUS was there to light
the breathless darkness of the grave--no HOPE stood by to point
exultant to a sinless heaven!--for him, futurity was a dark and
impenetrable gulf, without a wanderer or a voice.

Suddenly he started. An overpowering, yet unutterable awe crept over
him--a fearful but undefined sensation--a presentiment that something
terrible was about to happen. He strove to shake it off, but could
not--like an icy thrill it ran, slow and curdling, through his veins.
A low rustling, as of silken drapery, struck upon his ear. He turned
to know the cause, and leaned eagerly forward. A shriek, wild and
agonizing, burst from his pallid lips; his hair stood upright, and his
arms fell nerveless to his side--his blood ebbed back upon the heart,
returned with tenfold violence throughout his system, seemed to
thicken, and then stagnate; his pulses bounded, staggered and ceased;
cold moisture bathed his wan forehead, and his whole frame appeared
stiffening with the death-chill. A few feet distant, by a window the
very counterpart of the one near which he stood, loomed forth a
shape--a substance, yet it cast no shadow--the moonlight shone through
it, resting on the floor like slightly tarnished silver. He looked on
speechless and motionless; his whole soul concentrated into an intense
and aching gaze. At first, it floated before his fixed and dilating
vision, indistinct and mist-like; but, as he gazed, it assumed the
outline of a human form--then the features of Mary White, the
foster-sister whom he had murdered. The apparition grew still plainer.
The ghastly countenance; the fallen lip; the sightless eye, dull and
open with a vacant stare; the deep, solemn, mysterious repose which
ever accompanies the aspect of death; the deep wound near the heart,
from which gushed life's crimson torrent, falling at her feet without
a sound--each--all, for one short, passing, fearful, agonizing moment,
trembled into terrible distinctness. Then she lifted an arm reeking
with blood, and pointing through the window at a new-made gibbet and
its dangling rope, smiled a faint and sickly smile, and vanished as a
dying spark. The trance passed from his spirit, and nature recommenced
her operations like the clanking of a vast machinery. Yet his eye, as
if it could not recover from its vision of terror, remained glaring
upon the spot where the spectre had been; and it was not until several
minutes had elapsed that the shar