eauty and gentleness of advancing years.

Was that lightning? Yes--an awful, vivid, terrifying flash--then a
roaring peal of thunder, as if a thousand mountains were rolling one
over the other in the blue vault of Heaven! Who sleeps now in that
ancient city? Not one living soul. The dread trumpet of eternity could
not more effectually have awakened any one.

The hail continues. The wind continues. The uproar of the elements seems
at its height. Now she awakens--that beautiful girl on the antique bed;
she opens those eyes of celestial blue, and a faint cry of alarm bursts
from her lips. At least it is a cry which, amid the noise and turmoil
without, sounds but faint and weak. She sits upon the bed and presses
her hands upon her eyes. Heavens! what a wild torrent of wind, and rain,
and hail! The thunder likewise seems intent upon awakening sufficient
echoes to last until the next flash of forked lightning should again
produce the wild concussion of the air. She murmurs a prayer--a prayer
for those she loves best; the names of those dear to her gentle heart
come from her lips; she weeps and prays; she thinks then of what
devastation the storm must surely produce, and to the great God of
Heaven she prays for all living things. Another flash--a wild, blue,
bewildering flash of lightning streams across that bay window, for an
instant bringing out every colour in it with terrible distinctness. A
shriek bursts from the lips of the young girl, and then, with eyes fixed
upon that window, which, in another moment, is all darkness, and with
such an expression of terror upon her face as it had never before known,
she trembled, and the perspiration of intense fear stood upon her brow.

"What--what was it?" she gasped; "real, or a delusion? Oh, God, what was
it? A figure tall and gaunt, endeavouring from the outside to unclasp
the window. I saw it. That flash of lightning revealed it to me. It
stood the whole length of the window."

There was a lull of the wind. The hail was not falling so
thickly--moreover, it now fell, what there was of it, straight, and yet
a strange clattering sound came upon the glass of that long window. It
could not be a delusion--she is awake, and she hears it. What can
produce it? Another flash of lightning--another shriek--there could be
now no delusion.

A tall figure is standing on the ledge immediately outside the long
window. It is its finger-nails upon the glass that produces the sound so
like the