ey walked, a tall shrub, here and there, stood
erect and motionless. The young lady, whose impressions were probably
deepened by the mystical words of the moonshee, felt a kind of awe
stealing over her: she looked round upon the accustomed scene, as if
in some new and strange world; and when the old man motioned her to
stop, as they reached an open space on the sward, she obeyed with an
indescribable thrill.

'Look there,' said he, pointing to her shadow, which fell tall and
dark upon the grass. 'Do you see it?'

'Yes,' said she faintly, yet beginning to be ashamed. 'How sharply
defined are its edges! It looks like something you could touch.'

'But look longer--look better--look steadfastly. Is it still so
definite?'

'A kind of halo begins to gather round it: my eyes dazzle'----

'Then raise them to the heavens; fix them on yonder blue sky. What do
you see?'

'I see it still! But it is as white as mist, and of a gigantic size.'

'Has it a head?' asked the moonshee in an anxious whisper.

'Yes; it is complete in all its parts: but now it
melts--floats--disappears.'

'Thank God!' said the old man: 'your journey shall be prosperous--such
is the will of Heaven!' The experiment was tried on many other
occasions by the young lady, and always with similar success, although
never without a certain degree of trepidation, even after she had
learned that the spectral appearance in the heavens was nothing more
than the picture retained on the retina of the eye. She never saw the
phantom without a head, which accounts for her being alive to this
day; or even wanting a limb, although she has not been without her
share of the trials of the world. It can easily be conceived, however,
that certain conditions of the atmosphere may produce these phenomena,
which are regarded by the Hindoo seer as sure tokens of death or
disaster.

This superstition is not more unreasonable than the mistakes of our
early travellers, who were accustomed to attribute a meaning to the
phenomena of nature, of which more accurate knowledge has entirely
stripped them. But the notions of the Hindoo are always peculiar--his
fancy, even in its wildest excursions, is bounded by the circle of his
mythology. When our Old Indian's wanderings led her to Pinang, in the
Straits of Malacca, she found a Hindoo convict there, trembling even
in his chains as his fancy connected the wonders of the place with the
dogmas in which he had been reared. This most beaut