re succeeded by
the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.
Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the
scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and
became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish
every soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly
into funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed
up like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted
their laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of
woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home
and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the
shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow,
fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees
on those three lonely hills.

The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
face.

"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
mad-house?" inquired the latter.

"True, true!" said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within its
walls, but misery, misery without."

"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.

"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied the
lady, faintly.

"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
thee hence before the hour be past."

The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night wore
rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of
a bell stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
in the air. The lady shook