damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian and
myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even
fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of
the preacher's mouth.

"Good people," answered he, "the camp-meeting is broke up."

So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode
westward. Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object,
we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. The
fortune-teller, giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me,
departed on his Northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the
Stamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already
tackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinate
south-west along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel
took their laughing leave and pursued the eastern road, which I had
that day trodden; as they passed away the young man played a lively
strain and the girl's happy spirit broke into a dance, and, thus
dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant
pair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown
across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of my late
companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth
toward the distant city.

THE WHITE OLD MAID.

The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the
ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed, falling between the
heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But
how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a
shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in
its burial-clothes.

Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange
fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt
the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and
a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the
moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as
she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living
lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long
kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its
anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved
responsive to her own