ike the music of gushing waters to the feverish and thirsty
pilgrim.

My heart was too full for questions, and his for explanations. They
would come in due time. He was _my brother_,--that was enough. Ernest
could not be jealous of a brother's love. He would own with pride the
fraternal bond, and forget the father's crimes in the son's virtues.

It seemed but a moment since Richard had called me sister. Neither of us
had spoken, for tears choked our words; but our arms were still
entwined, and my head rested on his bosom, in all the abandonment of
nature's holiest feelings. All at once I heard a rustling in the grass,
soft and stealthy like a gliding snake. I raised my head, looked back,
looked up.

Merciful Father of heaven and earth! did I not then pass the agonies of
death?

I saw a face,--my God! how dark, how deadly, how terrible it was! I knew
that face, and my heart was rifted as if by a thunderbolt.

The loud report of a pistol, and a shriek such as never before
issued from mortal lips, bursting from mine, were simultaneous
sounds. Richard fell back with a deep groan. Then there seemed a
rushing sound as the breaking up of the great deep, a heaving and
tossing like the throes of an earthquake; then a sinking, sinking,
lower and lower, and then a cloud black as night and heavy as iron
came lowering and crushing me,--me, and the bleeding Richard. All was
darkness,--silence,--oblivion.

CHAPTER L.

A light, soft and glimmering as morning twilight, floated round me. Was
it the dawn of an eternal morning, or the lingering radiance of life's
departing day? Did my spirit animate the motionless body extended on
that snowy bed, or was it hovering, faint and invisible, above the
confines of mortality?

I was just awakened to the consciousness of existence,--a dim, vague
consciousness, such as one feels in a dissolving dream. I seemed
involved in a white, transparent cloud, and reclining on one of those
downy-looking cloud-beds that I have seen waiting to receive the sinking
sun.

While thus I lay, living the dawning life of infancy, the white cloud
softly rolled on one side, and a figure appeared in the opening, that
belonged to a previous state of existence. I had seen its mild
lineaments in another world; but when,--how long ago?

My eyes rested on the features of the lady till they grew more and more
familiar, but there was a white cloud round her face, that threw a
mournful shadow over it,--_that