hat brooded over men's spirits like
a spell from the other world, there were strange sounds from without
creeping into hallways and banging at the doors of apartments; dogs were
disconsolate, and whined incessantly; barn-yard echoes stole in on every
breeze; and the moon-beams, falling into windows, and past the forms of
sleepers, by their jerky, undecided motion, said, as plainly as words, "We
are dissatisfied with ourselves." Children tossed their arms about wildly
as they slept, and when wakened, requested that their couches might be
removed from the neighborhood of windows. A weird somnambulism took
possession of the forms of men and women, leading them to doors and
windows, and sometimes rents in the wall, where they awoke to find
themselves in listening attitudes, and to listen. Horses neighed, cattle
lowed, and chains which might have been attached to watch-dogs, but were
not, made the circuit of buildings, or were tossed against the boundaries
of closes.

Would morning never come? Girls and timid boys revolved this query in
their minds, building a faint hope thereon; but when they held their
breaths and listened, they found, as their fears had informed them, that
the clock pendulums, hammering away at the seconds, made no gap in time.
Others, who felt no certain fear, but a boding uneasiness, thought to
count the moments on their fingers while the gloom lasted; but so
frequently were they interrupted by strange sounds from without, that they
found themselves ever recurring to the point where they began. Even the
chickens on their roosts were witch-ridden, and crowed lustily for day,
when the half-grown moon had not yet passed meridian.

But "the longest lane has its turn," at one or both ends, and when the
shadows slept, and the gray messengers of morn tripped along the eastern
hills, the enchanter's wand was lifted from its hills and valleys, and
Crow Hide, unclosing its eyes, gave thanks. Now a breath of peacefulness
had come upon its affairs, and so radiant seemed the morning skies, and so
innocent of evil the sweet landscapes lying bathed in dew-sparkles, that
there were few who looked abroad without being inspired with doubts of
the existence of the latter, even as an abstraction. Even those who had
been controlled by the most abject emotions while the terrors of the night
lasted, when morning came, stood up boldly for a common sense solution of
the mystery. Those who had all their lives been troubled with