When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.

XI

You will know, perhaps, in the course of half an hour's reading, what has
been haunting my hours of sleep and waking for months. I cannot tell, of
course, whether you are a nervous person or not. If, however, you are
such a person,--if it is late at night,--if all the rest of the household
have gone off to bed,--if the wind is shaking your windows as if a human
hand were rattling the sashes,--if your candle or lamp is low and will
soon burn out,--let me advise you to take up some good quiet sleepy
volume, or attack the "Critical Notices" of the last Quarterly and leave
this to be read by daylight, with cheerful voices round, and people near
by who would hear you, if you slid from your chair and came down in a
lump on the floor.

I do not say that your heart will beat as mine did, I am willing to
confess, when I entered the dim chamber. Did I not tell you that I was
sensitive and imaginative, and that I had lain awake with thinking what
were the strange movements and sounds which I heard late at night in my
little neighbor's apartment? It had come to that pass that I was truly
unable to separate what I had really heard from what I had dreamed in
those nightmares to which I have been subject, as before mentioned. So,
when I walked into the room, and Bridget, turning back, closed the door
and left me alone with its tenant, I do believe you could have grated a
nutmeg on my