ut, leering all the time over her shoulder--'Where's Charles Nutter?--I
saw him speaking to you.'

Then the poor little woman grew quieter, and by her looks and moans, and
the clasping of her hands, and her upturned eyes, seemed to be praying;
and when Betty stealthily opened the press to take out another candle,
her poor mistress uttered another terrible scream, crying--

'You wretch! her head won't fit--you can't hide her;' and the poor woman
jumped out of her bed, shrieking 'Charles, Charles, Charles!'

Betty grew so nervous and frightened, that she fairly bawled to her
colleague, Moggy, and told her she would not stay in the room unless she
sat up all night with her. So, together they kept watch and ward, and as
the night wore on, Mrs. Nutter's slumbers grew more natural and less
brief, and her paroxysms of waking terror less maniacal. Still she would
waken, with a cry that thrilled them, from some frightful vision, and
seem to hear or see nothing aright for a good while after, and muttering
to the frightened maids--

'Listen to the knocking--oh!--breathing outside the door--bolt it,
Betty--girls, say your prayers--'tis he,' or sometimes, ''tis she.'

And thus this heavy night wore over; and the wind, which began to rise
as the hours passed, made sounds full of sad untranslatable meaning in
the ears of the watchers.

Poor Mrs. Sturk meanwhile, in the House by the Church-yard, sat
listening and wondering, and plying her knitting-needles in the
drawing-room. When the hour of her Barney's expected return had passed
some time, she sent down to the barrack, and then to the club, and then
on to the King's House, with her service to Mrs. Stafford, to enquire,
after her spouse. But her first and her second round of enquiries,
despatched at the latest minute at which she was likely to find any body
out of bed to answer them, were altogether fruitless. And the lights
went out in one house after another, and the Phoenix shut its doors,
and her own servants were for hours gone to bed; and the little town of
Chapelizod was buried in the silence of universal slumber. And poor Mrs.
Sturk still sat in her drawing-room, more and more agitated and
frightened.

But her missing soldier did not turn up, and Leonora sat and listened
hour after hour. No sound of return, not even the solemn clank and fiery
snort of the fiend-horse under her window, or the 'ho-lo, ho-la--my
life, my love!' of the phantom rider, cheated her with a mom