s I can be nearer to
a weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than I
could be for any other evil threatened in the world.

''But a moment more and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then she
added: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I have
to reveal, or will you behold it alone?'

''Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but she
can never be ashamed!'

''So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look,
and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!'

'Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell
upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same
place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music,
such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent
of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg
too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his
fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly
become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did
not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to
my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders
of the sky had been ringing.

'Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more
difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist,
transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and
finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon another
and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned galleries and
a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion, moving to and fro,
though uttering no sound. At one moment it seemed that I could look
through one of the windows of the phantom building, and I saw the
branches of a palmetto-tree waving in the winter wind. Then amidst and
apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood upon the
rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he seemed to be
reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared on the top of
the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the compact heretofore existing
between the several States of the Federal Union, under the name of the
United States of America.' My breath came thick, my eyes filled with
tears of wonder and dismay, and I could see no more.

''Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it