ated by the
wreckers, and at length obtained a passage to New York.

About a month after the loss of the _Independence_, I happened to meet
Captain Hardy in Broadway. Our conversation turned, naturally, upon the
disaster, and especially upon the sad fate of poor Wyatt. I thus learned
the following particulars:

The artist had engaged passage for himself, wife, two sisters, and a
servant. His wife was indeed, as she had been represented, a most lovely
and most accomplished woman. On the morning of the fourteenth of June
(the day in which I first visited the ship), the lady suddenly sickened
and died. The young husband was frantic with grief, but circumstances
imperatively forbade the deferring his voyage to New York. It was
necessary to take to her mother the corpse of his adored wife, and, on
the other hand, the universal prejudice which would prevent his doing so
openly was well known. Nine tenths of the passengers would have
abandoned the ship rather than take passage with a dead body.

In this dilemma Captain Hardy arranged that the corpse, being first
partially embalmed and packed, with a large quantity of salt in a box of
suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. Nothing
was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood
that Mr. Wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary
that some person should personate her during the voyage. This the
deceased lady's maid was easily prevailed on to do. The extra stateroom,
originally engaged for this girl during her mistress's life, was now
merely retained. In this stateroom the pseudo-wife slept, of course,
every night. In the daytime she performed, to the best of her ability,
the part of her mistress, whose person, it had been carefully
ascertained, was unknown to any of the passengers on board.

My own mistake arose, naturally enough, through too careless, too
inquisitive, and too impulsive a temperament. But of late it is a rare
thing that I sleep soundly at night. There is a countenance which haunts
me, turn as I will. There is an hysterical laugh which will forever ring
within my ears.

THE BIRTH-MARK

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

In the latter part of the last century, there lived a man of science--an
eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy--who, not long
before our story opens, had made experience of a spiritual affinity,
more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to