Hester next was called, but she, too, was gone.

Then, seizing the bell which stood upon the table, she rang it with all her force, and still there came no one to her relief.
Again Willie stood by her, offering her a goblet overflowing with water; but when she attempted to take it, Willie changed into Lenora, who laughed mockingly at her distress, telling her there was water in the well and ice on the curbstone.

Once more the phantom faded away, and the old porter was there, wading through a limpid stream and offering her to drink a cup of molten lead.
"Merciful Heaven!" shrieked the sick woman, as she writhed from side to side on her bed, which seemed changed to burning coals; "will no one bring me water, water, water!" An interval of calmness succeeded, during which she revolved in her mind the possibility of going herself to the kitchen, where she knew the water-pail was standing.

No sooner had she decided upon this than the room appeared full of little demons, who laughed, and chattered, and shouted in her ears: "Go--do it! Willie did, when the night was dark and chilly; but now it is warm--nice and warm--try it, do!" Tremblingly Mrs.Hamilton stepped upon the floor, and finding herself too weak to walk, crouched down, and crept slowly down the stairs to the kitchen door, where she stopped to rest.

Across the room by the window stood the pail, and as her eye fell upon it the mirth of the little winged demons appeared in her disordered fancy to increase; and when the spot was reached, the tumbler seized and thrust into the pail, they darted hither and thither, shouting gleefully: "Lower, lower down; just as Willie did.