ud
in aggregate. He who was watching realized then that the wraiths of the
dead whose skulls he had purloined from their place of sepulture were out
in lament and protest. He went on his knees at once and prayed with vigor
until morning. As soon as it was light enough to see his way he replaced
the skulls, and was not troubled by the "haunts" again. All the gold in
America, said he, would not tempt him to remove any more bones from the
cave-tombs of the unknown dead.

LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP

Drummond's Pond, or the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, is a dark and lonely
tarn that lies in the centre of this noted Virginia morass. It is, in a
century-old tradition, the Styx of two unhappy ghosts that await the end
of time to pass its confines and enjoy the sunshine of serener worlds. A
young woman of a family that had settled near this marsh died of a fever
caused by its malarial exhalations, and was buried near the swamp. The
young man to whom she was betrothed felt her loss so keenly that for days
he neither ate nor slept, and at last broke down in mind and body. He
recovered a measure of physical health, after a time, but his reason was
hopelessly lost.

It was his hallucination that the girl was not dead, but had been exiled
to the lonely reaches of this watery wilderness. He was heard to mutter,
"I'll find her, and when Death comes I'll hide her in the hollow of a
cypress until he passes on." Evading restraint, he plunged into the fen,
and for some days he wandered there, eating berries, sleeping on tussocks
of grass, with water-snakes crawling over him and poisonous plants
shedding their baneful dew on his flesh. He came to the lake at last. A
will-o'the-wisp played along the surface. "'Tis she!" he cried. "I see
her, standing in the light." Hastily fashioning a raft of cypress boughs
he floated it and pushed toward the centre of the pond, but the eagerness
of his efforts and the rising of a wind dismembered the frail platform,
and he fell into the black water to rise no more. But often, in the
night, is seen the wraith of a canoe, with a fire-fly lamp burning on its
prow, restlessly urged to and fro by two figures that seem to be vainly
searching for an exit from the place, and that are believed to be those
of the maiden and her lover.

THE BARGE OF DEFEAT

Rappannock River, in Virginia, used to be vexed with shadowy craft that
some of the populace affirmed to be no boats, but spirits in disguise.
One of