ant.

She was dressed in the ordinary costume of a peasant-woman, and carried
a small basket on her arm, which, had she opened it, would have been
found to contain a candle and a bouquet of fresh roses carefully covered
with a paper of silver tissue,--nothing more. An honest peasant-woman
would have had a rosary in her basket, but this was no honest-peasant
woman, and she had none.

The forest was very still,--it was steeped in quietness. The rustling
of the dry leaves under the feet of the woman was all she heard, except
when the low sighing of the wind, the sharp bark of a fox, or the shriek
of an owl, broke the silence for a moment, and all was again still.

The woman looked watchfully around as she glided onwards. The path
was known to her, but not so familiarly as to prevent the necessity
of stopping every few minutes to look about her and make sure she was
right.

It was long since she had travelled that way, and she was looking for a
landmark--a gray stone that stood somewhere not far from where she was,
and near which she knew that there was a footpath that led, not directly
to the Chateau, but to the old deserted watch-tower of Beaumanoir.

That stone marked a spot not to be forgotten by her, for it was the
memorial of a deed of wickedness now only remembered by herself and
by God. La Corriveau cared nothing for the recollection. It was not
terrible to her, and God made no sign; but in his great book of account,
of which the life of every man and woman forms a page, it was written
down and remembered.

On the secret tablets of our memory, which is the book of our life,
every thought, word, and deed, good or evil, is written down indelibly
and forever; and the invisible pen goes on writing day after day, hour
after hour, minute after minute, every thought, even the idlest, every
fancy the most evanescent: nothing is left out of our book of life which
will be our record in judgment! When that book is opened and no secrets
are hid, what son or daughter of Adam is there who will not need to say,
"God be merciful?"

La Corriveau came suddenly upon the gray stone. It startled her, for its
rude contour, standing up in the pale moonlight, put on the appearance
of a woman. She thought she was discovered, and she heard a noise; but
another glance reassured her. She recognized the stone, and the noise
she had heard was only the scurrying of a hare among the dry leaves.

The habitans held this spot to be haunted b