look, and I
found that it was a copy of the same book which I had lost in the wall
at the ferry. I bought it for a few coppers with the greatest
satisfaction, and began at once to read it. It had been published in
England early in the eighteenth century, and was written by one Mr.
Thomas Highward of Chester,--a journal of his travels among some of the
English colonists of North America, containing much curious and
desirable knowledge, with some useful advice to those persons having
intentions of emigrating. I looked at the prosy pages here and there,
and finally found again those reminiscences of the town of Boston and
the story of Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to
live in this world to the end of time. She had lately been in Boston,
but had disappeared again; she endeavoured to disguise herself, and
would not stay long in one place if she feared that her story was
known, and that she was recognized. One Mr. Fleming, a man of good
standing and repute, and an officer of Her Majesty Queen Anne, had
sworn to Mr. Thomas Highward that his father, a person of great age,
had once seen Mistress Warburton in his youth; that she then bore
another name, but had the same appearance. "Not wishing to seem unduly
credulous," said Mr. Highward, "I disputed this tale; but there was
some considerable evidence in its favour, and at least this woman was
of vast age, and was spoken of with extreme wonder by the town's folk."

I could not help thinking of my old childish suspicions of Lady Ferry,
though I smiled at the folly of them and of this story more than once.
I tried to remember if I had heard of her death; but I was still a
child when my cousin Agnes had died. Had poor Lady Ferry survived her,
and what could have become of her? I asked my father, but he could
remember nothing, if indeed he ever had heard of her death at all. He
spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that, learning
her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more pitiful
because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to their
door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her
days--"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with
a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred years
old when you saw her. She belonged to a fine old family which had gone
to wreck and ruin. She strayed about for years, and it was a godsend
to her to have found such a hom