air trunk fifty years old, and nearly falling to pieces; black
silhouettes, in little round ebony frames, of a woman and a man hung
over the mantel, and between them a silhouette of a face she had no
difficulty in recognizing to be intended for her own.

Stretched upon a low child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in
those days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the
parents, lay the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes,
with his steeple-crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and
his face as red as burning fever could make it.

Vesta only verified the particulars of the inventory of Milburn's lodge
afterwards, her instant attention being drawn to the motionless form of
her husband, whose flushed face seemed to indicate a death by
strangulation or apoplexy. She went forward and put her hand upon him.

"Mr. Milburn!" she spoke.

"Milburn!" echoed a voice of piercing strength, though ill articulated.
She looked around in astonishment, and saw nobody.

"Husband!" Vesta spoke, louder, stooping over him.

"S'band! s'band! See! see!" shouted the wanton voice, almost at her
elbow.

Vesta, with one hand on the helpless man's brow, turned again, almost
indignantly, for the tone seemed to address some sense of neglect or
shame in her, which she had not been guilty of. Still, nothing was to be
seen.

At the far corner of the room was a step-ladder leading to a hole in the
loft above; but this was not the place of the interruption, for she
heard the voice now come as from the chimney at the opposite end of the
room, nearer the bed, and accompanied with a fluttering and scratching,
as if some spirit of evil, with the talons of a rat or a bat, was trying
to break in where the prostrate man lay on the bed of oblivion.

"Meshach! Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty!
Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she!
She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"

Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling
at the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a
common bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his
wings, and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant
to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she could not see.

His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous
activity. He flung himself into the air above her head, uttering sounds
of s