and groaned with the insufferable, tearless agony of a strong
man's grief.

"HERE SHE IS, MARSTER! Bress de Lord, here she is, and Nelly too! Nelly
found her!" frantically exclaimed Joe, bursting open the chamber door,
while Sybil flew past him and threw herself with a sob of delight into
the arms of her husband. His brain reeled with the sudden, overwhelming
joy, as he clasped his wife to his heart.

"Good Heaven, man! why did you not prepare your master for this?" was
the first question Captain Pendleton thought of asking the negro.

Joe stared, and found nothing to answer. He did not understand
preparation.

Nelly jumped upon the bed, and insisted upon being recognized; but
nobody noticed her. Noble humanity is singularly ungrateful to their
four-footed friends.

Lyon Berners, forgetful of everybody and everything else in the world,
was gazing fondly, wonderingly into his wife's beautiful pale face.
_His_ face was like marble.

"My own, my own," he murmured. "By what miracle have you been
preserved?"

Sybil could not answer; she could only sob for joy at this reunion,
forgetful, poor child, of the awful danger in which she still stood.

Captain Pendleton remembered it. He first looked around to take note of
who was in the room. There were Mr. and Mrs. Berners, himself, Joe, and
the colored woman Margy--only _one_ new witness, if there were no
others outside who might have seen the entrance of Sybil.

He went and locked the door, that no one else should enter the chamber.
And then he called Joe apart to the distant window.

"You very reckless fellow! tell me who besides ourselves have seen Mrs.
Berners enter this house."

"Not a singly soul, marster, outen dis room. We walk all de way from de
Haunted Chapel, and didn't meet nobody we knowed. Miss Sybil she keep de
shawl over her head. Dem as did meet us couldn't a told who she was or
even if she was white or brack. When we got home here, I jes opens de
door like I always do, and Miss Sybil she follow me in, likewise Nelly.
Nobody seed us, likewise we seed nobody, 'cept it was Jerome, as was
jest a passin' outen de back door wid a breakfast tray in his hands; but
he didn't see us, acause his back was to us, which that fellow is always
too lazy to look over his own shoulder, no matter what may be behind
him," said Joe, contemptuously.

"That is true; but lucky on this occasion. Then you are certain that no
one out of this room knows of Mrs. Berner's prese