like one who disperses a cloud, and
casts off a weight, she said:

"It is over! I will not be nervous or hysterical again. I have brought
trouble on you as well as on myself, dear Lyon; but I will show you that
I can bear it. I will look this calamity firmly in the face, and come
what may, I will not drag you down by sinking under it."

And so saying, she gave him her hand, and arose and followed him as he
pushed on before, breaking down or bearing aside the branches that
overhung and obstructed the path.

Half an hour of this difficult and tedious travelling brought them down
into a deep dark dell, in the midst of which stood the "Haunted Chapel."

It was an old colonial church, a monument of the earliest settlement in
the valley. It was now a wild and beautiful ruin, with its surroundings
all glowing with color and sparkling with light. In itself it was a
small Gothic edifice, built of the dark iron-grey rock dug from the
mountain quarries. Its walls, window-frames, and roof were all still
standing, and were almost entirely covered by creepers, among which the
wild rose vine, now full of scarlet berries, was conspicuous.

A broken stonewall overgrown with brambles enclosed the old church-yard,
where a few fallen and mouldering gravestones, half sunk among the dead
leaves, still remained.

All around the church, on the bottom of the dell, and up the sides of
the steeps, were thickly clustered forest-trees, now glowing refulgent
in their gorgeous autumn livery of crimson and gold, scarlet and purple.

A little rill, an offspring of the Black Torrent, tumbled down the side
of the mountain behind the church, and ran frolicking irreverently
through the old graveyard. The great cascade was out of sight, though
very near for its thunder filled the air.

"See," said Sybil, pointing to the little singing rill; "Nature is
unsympathetic. She can laugh and frolic over the dead, and, besides, the
suffering."

"It would seem, then, that Nature is wiser as well as gladder than we
are; since she, who is transitory, rejoices while we, who are immortal,
pine," answered Lyon Berners, pleased that any thought should win her
from the contemplation of her misfortune.

He then led the way into the old ruined church through the door frames,
from which the doors had long been lost. The stone floor, and the stone
altar still remained; all else within the building was gone.

Lyon Berners looked all around, up and down the interior,