ouded figure, who supported its other
end. And as the two mysterious apparitions now stood beside the altar,
Sybil saw that the box that they held between them was a coffin!

Nor was that all. While they moved a little down the side wall, they
were followed by two other strange figures, issuing from the vault in
the same order, and bearing between them, in the same manner, a second
coffin; and as they, in their turn, filed down the side wall, they also
were followed by still two others coming up out of the vault, and
bringing with them a third coffin!

And then a ghastly procession formed against the side wall. Three long
shadowy coffins borne by six dark shrouded figures, filed past the
gothic windows, and disappeared through the open chapel door.

Sybil clearly saw all this, as in a nightmare from which she could not
escape; she still lay motionless, speechless, and helpless, until she
quite lost consciousness in a profound and dreamless sleep. So deep and
heavy was this sleep, that she had no sense of existence for many hours.
When at length she did awake, it seemed almost to a new life, so
utterly, for a time, was all that had recently past forgotten. But as
she arose and looked around, and collected her faculties, and remembered
her position, she was astonished to see by the shining of the sun into
the western windows, that it was late in the afternoon, and that they
had slept nearly all day, for her husband was still sleeping heavily.

Then she remembered the horrible vision of the night, and she looked
anxiously towards the door of the vault. It seemed fast as ever. She got
up and went to look at it. It _was_ fast, the bars firmly bedded in the
solid masonry, as they had been before.

What then had been the vision? She shuddered to think of it. Her first
impulse was now to arouse her husband and tell him what had happened.
But her tenderness for him pleaded with her to forbear.

"He sleeps well, poor Lyon! let him sleep," she said, and she threw a
shawl around her shoulders, and went out of the chapel to get a breath
of the fresh morning air.

She had to pass among the gray old gravestones lying deep in the
bright-colored dew-spangled brushwood. As she picked her way past them,
she suddenly stopped and screamed.

Captain Pendleton was lying prostrate, like a dead man at the foot of an
old tree!

With a strong effort of the will, she controlled herself sufficiently to
enable her to approach and examine h