let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look,
and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!'

"Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell
upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same
place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music,
such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent
of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg
too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his
fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly
become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did
not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to
my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders
of the sky had been ringing.

"Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more
difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist,
transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and
finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon,
another and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned
galleries and a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion,
moving to and fro, though uttering no sound. At one moment, it seemed
that I could look through one of the windows of the phantom building,
and I saw the branches of a palmetto tree waving in the winter wind.
Then amidst and apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood
upon the rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he
seemed to be reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared
on the top of the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the union heretofore
existing between the State of South Carolina and the several States of
the Federal Union, under the name of the United States of America.' My
breath came thick, my eyes filled with tears of wonder and dismay, and I
could see no more.

"'Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It cannot be
that the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union of
the United States of America!'

"'It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of the
sorceress from within the cloud of white mist.

"'If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for the
heavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!'

"'Look again, then!' said th