speak, I longed for expressions of her love.

Still more plainly did life appear, until I saw her open her eyes.
They were dull and had a blank expression, but by and by they became
brighter. She looked around the vault as if in wonder, then her eyes
rested on the lantern, and again she turned them towards me. For a
minute she gazed, then with a cry she sat upright.

* Although the reader may regard the foregoing as wild and impossible,
I can vouch for the truth of a story identical in many points with that
told by Roger Trewinion. The wife of a nobleman of the West of
England, whose name is well-known in Cornwall, was supposed to be dead,
and was buried in the family vault situated in the old parish church.
A valuable ring which was on her finger when she died was allowed to
remain, and it was known by the servants and villagers that this
ornament was in the tomb with her. The sexton determined to get it,
and accordingly at midnight made his way to the church. In seeking to
remove the ring he caused the latent life to assert itself, and seeing
the lady move he ran out of the church, leaving the lantern behind him.
She became conscious, took the sexton's lantern, and found her way back
to the hall. She lived long enough to become the mother of a son, who
afterwards became the heir of his father's estates.--_Note by the_
EDITOR.

CHAPTER XXII

THE VOICE OF THE DEAD

Oh, one more kiss from your lily-white lips,
One kiss is all I crave;
Oh, one more kiss from your lily-white lips
And return back to your grave.
--_Old Cornish Song_.

Long years have passed since the events I am now narrating, yet my
flesh creeps as I write. Imagine, if you can, the circumstances that
surrounded me; think of the position in which I was placed. I had
learnt amidst anguish and despair that the woman I loved, and who I
thought had called me home, was dead, and I had determined to visit her
grave and to see her dead face. Then when I had found my way to her
tomb, and uncovered her resting-place, I had seen the one whom I had
thought dead move, and give other signs of life. When she sat up in
her coffin my blood froze in my veins.

Was it my Ruth who lived? Was her death only fancied after all? Now I
saw a purpose in all my blind wanderings! Now I understood the cry
which I had heard sweeping across the weary waste of waters, "Come home
and save me, Roger!" Now I saw meaning in my mad impuls