d mice peeped at us from their
holes, no uncouth insects glided on the walls, no flies buzzed in the
unwonted lamplight, scarcely a spider slid down his damp and trailing
web,--all this seemed to enhance the mystery. The vacancy was more
dreary than desertion: it was something old which had never been young.
We found ourselves speaking in whispers; the children kept close to
their parents; we seemed to be chasing some awful Silence from room to
room; and the last apartment, the great drawing-room, we really seemed
loath to enter. The less the rest of the house had to show, the more,
it seemed, must be concentrated there. Even as we entered, a blast of
air from a broken pane extinguished our last light, and it seemed to
take many minutes to rekindle it.

As it shone once more, a brilliant lightning-flash also swept through
the window, and flickered and flickered, as if it would never have
done. The eldest child suddenly screamed, and pointed with her finger,
first to one great window and then to its opposite. My eyes
instinctively followed the successive directions; and the double glance
gave me all I came to seek, and more than all. Outside the western
window lay Severance, his white face against the pane, his eyes gazing
across and past us,--struck down doubtless by the fallen tree, which
lay across the piazza, and hid him from external view. Opposite him,
and seen through the eastern window, stood, statue-like, the hooded
figure, but with the great capote thrown back, showing a sad, eager,
girlish face, with dark eyes, and a good deal of black hair,--one of
those faces of peasant beauty such as America never shows,--faces where
ignorance is almost raised into refinement by its childlike look.
Contrasted with Severance's wild gaze, the countenance wore an
expression of pitying forgiveness, almost of calm; yet it told of
wasting sorrow and the wreck of a life. Gleaming lustrous beneath the
lightning, it had a more mystic look when the long flash had ceased,
and the single lantern burned beneath it, like an altar-lamp before a
shrine.

"It is Aunt Emilia," exclaimed the little girl; and as she spoke, the
father, turning angrily upon her, dashed the light to the ground, and
groped his way out without a word of answer. I was too much alarmed
about Severance to care for aught else, and quickly made my way to the
western piazza, where I found him stunned by the fallen tree,--injured,
I feared, internally,--still conscious,