ket and entered the old
churchyard, a scene of devastation met his view that appalled his soul.

"Oh, my Lord!" he said, stopping and leaning upon his pick-crutch, as he
gazed around, "what an awful sight! Joe, you are like--somebody among
the ruins of something," he added, as a vague classic similitude about
Scipio and Carthage flitted through his half-dazed brain.

It was indeed a scene of horror deep enough to dismay the stoutest
heart! Nor was that horror less overwhelming for the obscurity that
enveloped it. The Haunted Chapel was gone; and in its place was a heap
of blackened, burning, and smoking ruins, with here and there the arm or
leg of some crushed and mutilated victim protruding from the mass. And
in strange contrast to this appalling scene, was a poor little Skye
terrier, preserved from destruction, Heaven only knows how, that ran
snuffing and whining piteously around and around the wreck.

"Come, Nelly! pretty Nelly! good Nelly!" called Joe.

The Skye terrier left off circling around the smouldering ruins, and
bounded towards her dusky friend, and leaped upon him with a yelp of
welcome and a whine of sorrow.

"Oh, Nelly! Nelly! what has happened?" cried Joe.

The little dog howled dismally in answer.

"Yes, I know what you would say. I understand. The devil has blown up
the Haunted Chapel," said Joe.

She lifted up her nose and her voice in a woe-begone howl of assent.

"Just so; but oh! Nelly! Nelly Brown! where is the master and the
mistress?"

She answered by a cry of agony, and ran back to the ruins, and
re-commenced her pawing and whining.

"Ah, yes! just so; buried under all that there," groaned Joe.

But Nelly ran back to him, barking emphatically, and then forward to the
ruins, and then, seeing that he still stood there, back to him again,
with the most eloquent barks, that seemed to assure him that her master
and mistress were under the mass, and at length to ask him what was the
use of his being a man, if he could not dig them out.

Never did man and dog understand each other better. Joe replied to Nelly
as if she had spoken in the best approved English.

"I know it, honey! I know they are; they are there!" he sobbed, "but you
see I'm crippled, and can't do nothing."

But the little Skye terrier could not comprehend such incompetency in a
human creature, and so she very irrationally and irritatingly continued
her appeals and her reproaches, until Joe hobbled up to the heap of
s