tation previously undergone.

For several weeks this unfortunate victim, as they supposed, to his
own vague and supernatural terrors, lay without showing the slightest
symptom of recognition. Groans and incoherent murmurs, after long
intervals of silence, proclaimed that life was yet lingering on the
threshold of the tabernacle, unwilling for her flight. A cry of terror
would sometimes break forth, and his whole frame become violently
convulsed, while he seemed to exhaust himself in struggles to escape.

We will not prolong the recital, nor is it needful to relate how the
first light glimpse broke through the clouds that had so long veiled
his spirit. Fearful were the first awakenings of the soul. Like the
last dread summons, it was not an awakening from oblivion. Every
faculty wore the dark impress of terror, though he remained apparently
unconscious of the interval that had passed.

Pilkington and his friend were unremitting in their attentions. The
issue was long doubtful; but in the end he recovered from the dread
hallucination under which he laboured.

With restored health, he disclosed, to them only, the events which had
occurred in the brief interval of their separation.

"I think I before told you," said he, reluctantly commencing the
narrative, "that the figure who appeared so mysteriously at the door
of our temporary shelter on the hill wore the very image of my uncle,
whom you never knew, Pilkington. You may conceive that my surprise was
excessive, though I cannot say that I felt so; but it will, in some
measure, account for my apparent rashness and eager determination to
follow, when I inform you that it was just twelve years previously, on
that self-same night, the eve of St Bartlemy, when his unaccountable
disappearance on these moors, of which I have before spoken, threw
consternation and distress into the hitherto peaceful and happy
community with which he was associated. I need not recount the family
disasters and disagreements which his mysterious absence has
originated. No trace was left of his disappearance; nor could his body
ever be discovered. The night prior to our excursion I saw him; but it
was in a dream. This circumstance, together with the place and the
very time, twelve years since his departure, was the cause of my
apparent thoughtfulness and abstraction prior to the appearance of our
mysterious visitor. I felt an apathy; and, at the same time, a load
upon my spirits for which I could