me! That is well. I am glad your memory serves you thus
far!"

A low sound that was half a sob and half a cry broke from her.

"Oh, no, no!" she muttered, again, incoherently--"it cannot be! It must
be false--it is some vile plot--it cannot be true! True! Oh, Heaven! it
would be too cruel, too horrible!"

I strode up to her. I drew her hands away from her eyes and grasped
them tightly in my own.

"Hear me!" I said, in clear, decisive tones. "I have kept silence, God
knows, with a long patience, but now--now I can speak. Yes! you thought
me dead--you had every reason to think so, you had every proof to
believe so. How happy my supposed death made you! What a relief it was
to you!--what an obstruction removed from your path! But--I was buried
alive!" She uttered a faint shriek of terror, and looking wildly about
her, strove to wrench her hands from my clasp. I held them more
closely. "Ay, think of it, wife of mine!--you to whom luxury has been
second nature, think of this poor body straightened in a helpless
swoon, packed and pressed into yonder coffin and nailed up fast, shut
out from the blessed light and air, as one would have thought, forever!
Who could have dreamed that life still lingered in me--life still
strong enough to split asunder the boards that inclosed me, and leave
them shattered, as you see them now!"

She shuddered and glanced with aversion toward the broken coffin, and
again tried to loosen her hands from mine. She looked at me with a
burning anger in her face.

"Let me go!" she panted. "Madman! liar!--let me go!"

I released her instantly and stood erect, regarding her fixedly.

"I am no madman," I said, composedly; "and you know as well as I do
that I speak the truth. When I escaped from that coffin I found myself
a prisoner in this very vault--this house of my perished ancestry,
where, if old legends could be believed, the very bones that are stored
up here would start and recoil from YOUR presence as pollution to the
dead, whose creed was HONOR."

The sound of her sobbing breath ceased suddenly; she fixed her eyes on
mine; they glittered defiantly.

"For one long awful night," I resumed, "I suffered here. I might have
starved--or perished of thirst. I thought no agony could surpass what I
endured! But I was mistaken: there was a sharper torment in store for
me. I discovered a way of escape; with grateful tears I thanked God for
my rescue, for liberty, for life! Oh, what a fool was I! How