time since this so often empty and deceptive life of
mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized
itself.

Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this
eventful day and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the
tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of
dry bones.

"Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out
of its grave now, I wonder?"

A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop. His
pipe was still alight, the star still flamed upon his breast, the
embroidery still glowed upon his garments, nor had he lost in any
degree or manner that could be estimated the aspect that assimilated
him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as
is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor
reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice.

"What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffling
hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty
fiends to torture him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended
knees!"

"No, mother," said Feathertop, despondingly; "it was not that."

"Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her fierce
eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. "I'll cover her face with
pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front
teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy
having."

"Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop. "The girl was half
won, and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me
altogether human. But," he added after a brief pause and then a howl of
self-contempt, "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen myself for the
wretched, ragged, empty thing I am. I'll exist no longer."

Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might
against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a
medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from
the heap and a shriveled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now
lustreless but the rudely carved gap that just before had been a mouth
still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far
human.

"Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics
of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There
are thousa