Can it be, then," was his natural course of reflection--"can strong and earnest wishes, formed during the last agony of nature, survive its catastrophe, surmount the awful bounds of the spiritual world, and place before us its inhabitants in the hues and colouring of life?
And why was that manifested to the eye which could not unfold its tale to the ear?
and wherefore should a breach be made in the laws of nature, yet its purpose remain unknown?
Vain questions, which only death, when it shall make me like the pale and withered form before me, can ever resolve." He laid a cloth, as he spoke, over the lifeless face, upon whose features he felt unwilling any longer to dwell.

He then took his place in an old carved oaken chair, ornamented with his own armorial bearings, which Alice had contrived to appropriate to her own use in the pillage which took place among creditors, officers, domestics, and messengers of the law when his father left Ravenswood Castle for the last time.

Thus seated, he banished, as much as he could, the superstitious feelings which the late incident naturally inspired.

His own were sad enough, without the exaggeration of supernatural terror, since he found himself transferred from the situation of a successful lover of Lucy Ashton, and an honoured and respected friend of her father, into the melancholy and solitary guardian of the abandoned and forsaken corpse of a common pauper.
He was relieved, however, from his sad office sooner that he could reasonably have expected, considering the distance betwixt the hut of the deceased and the village, and the age and infirmities of three old women who came from thence, in military phrase, to relieve guard upon the body of the defunct.

On any other occasion the speed of these reverend sibyls would have been much more moderate, for the first was eighty years of age and upwards, the second was paralytic, and the third lame of a leg from some accident.