was dead. She died while asleep, without a
struggle, or a groan. I called in Mrs. Grove, the housekeeper, who had
been devotedly attached to Miriam, and we dressed her in a white robe,
and scattered fragrant flowers around her, to take away, if possible,
the horror and ghastliness of death. She did not look at all like the
Miriam I had known and loved. Her features were sharp and pinched, and
her face looked careworn, and _anxious_--if anything so lifeless can be
said to have expression.

No one came into the room that evening but the family, and they retired
early, and left me alone with the dead. Mrs. Grove sat up all night in
the dining room, which was separated from Miriam's room by a narrow
entry. She would have remained with me, but I saw that she was very
nervous and timid, and insisted that she should leave me. I could not
understand her feeling. I felt not the slightest fear of the inanimate
body before me, or of the disembodied spirit. She had been my friend
during her whole life--why should she harm me now?

I put out the light, and seated myself by the open window at the foot of
the bed. The round, full moon, in a cloudless sky, made every object in
the room and out of it as distinct as in the day. I looked at the
fountain, which spun its threads of light under the window; and at the
little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with
its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched
upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently
stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the
appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it
impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has
ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and
again I looked at Miriam, and again and again I fancied there was a
slight motion, scarcely perceptible. At last the constant repetition of
this feeling made me uneasy, and to quiet my mind, and satisfy myself
that it was only _seeming_, I went to the bed and bent over Miriam.

My blood ran cold in my veins, as I encountered the eyes of Miriam,
open, dilated, and black, fixed upon mine! There was a strange light in
them. It scarcely looked like life, and yet it surely could not be
death. It seemed more like a light shining far down some black and deep
sepulchre. Half frenzied with terror, and scarcely knowing what I did, I
forced down the ey