e faints away, so consciousness
swooned, and he fell suddenly down a precipice of sleep. The music
rose again, a pensive and holy chant, and sounded on to its close,
unaffected by the action of his brain, for he slept and heard it no
more. He lay tranquilly, hardly seeming to breathe, in motionless
repose. The room was dim and silent, and the furniture took uncouth
shapes around him. The red glow upon the ceiling, from the screened
fire, showed the misty figure of the phantom kneeling by his side.
All light had gone from the spectral form. It knelt beside him,
mutely, as in prayer. Once it gazed at his quiet face with a mournful
tenderness, and its shadowy hands caressed his forehead. Then it
resumed its former attitude, and the slow hours crept by.

At last it rose and glided to the table, on which lay the open
letter. It seemed to try to lift the sheets with its misty hands,
but vainly. Next it essayed the lifting of a pen which lay there,
but failed. It was a piteous sight, to see its idle efforts on
these shapes of grosser matter, which appeared now to have to it
but the existence of illusions. Wandering about the shadowy room,
it wrung its phantom hands as in despair.

Presently it grew still. Then it passed quickly to his side, and
stood before him. He slept calmly. It placed one ghostly hand above
his forehead, and with the other pointed to the open letter. In
this attitude its shape grew momentarily more distinct. It began
to kindle into brightness. The pale flame again flowed from its
hand, streaming downward to his brain. A look of trouble darkened
the sleeping face. Stronger,--stronger; brighter,--brighter; until,
at last, it stood before him, a glorious shape of light, with an
awful look of commanding love in its shining features: and the
sleeper sprang to his feet with a cry!

The phantom had vanished. He saw nothing. His first impression
was, not that he had dreamed, but that, awaking in the familiar
room, he had seen the spirit of his dead friend, bright and awful by
his side, and that it had gone! In the flash of that quick change,
from sleeping to waking, he had detected, he thought, the unearthly
being that, he now felt, watched him from behind the air, and it
had vanished! The library was the same as in the moment of that
supernatural revealing; the open letter lay upon the table still;
only _that_ was gone which had made these common aspects terrible.
Then all the hard, strong scepticism of his n