el:--Go to the
Lady of Sorrow, and 'take with both hands'* what she will give you.
Yonder lies her cottage. She is not in it now, but her door stands open,
and there is bread and water on her table. Go in; sit down; eat of the
bread; drink of the water; and wait there until she appear. Then ask
counsel of her, for she is true, and her wisdom is great."

He fell to weeping afresh, and I left him weeping. What I said, I fear
he did not heed. But Mara would find him!

The sun was down, and the moon unrisen, when I reached the abode of the
monsters, but it was still as a stone till I passed over. Then I heard
a noise of many waters, and a great cry behind me, but I did not turn my
head.

Ere I reached the house of death, the cold was bitter and the darkness
dense; and the cold and the darkness were one, and entered into my bones
together. But the candle of Eve, shining from the window, guided me, and
kept both frost and murk from my heart.

The door stood open, and the cottage lay empty. I sat down disconsolate.

And as I sat, there grew in me such a sense of loneliness as never yet
in my wanderings had I felt. Thousands were near me, not one was with
me! True, it was I who was dead, not they; but, whether by their life or
by my death, we were divided! They were alive, but I was not dead enough
even to know them alive: doubt WOULD come. They were, at best, far from
me, and helpers I had none to lay me beside them!

Never before had I known, or truly imagined desolation! In vain I took
myself to task, saying the solitude was but a seeming: I was awake, and
they slept--that was all! it was only that they lay so still and did not
speak! they were with me now, and soon, soon I should be with them!

I dropped Adam's old spade, and the dull sound of its fall on the clay
floor seemed reverberated from the chamber beyond: a childish terror
seized me; I sat and stared at the coffin-door.--But father Adam, mother
Eve, sister Mara would soon come to me, and then--welcome the cold world
and the white neighbours! I forgot my fears, lived a little, and loved
my dead.

Something did move in the chamber of the dead! There came from it what
was LIKE a dim, far-off sound, yet was not what I knew as sound. My soul
sprang into my ears. Was it a mere thrill of the dead air, too slight
to be heard, but quivering in every spiritual sense? I KNEW without
hearing, without feeling it!

The something was coming! it drew nearer! In the bosom