 peasantry, and despatched Babie to the neighbouring
village to procure the assistance of some females, assuring her that, in the
meanwhile, he would himself remain with the dead body, which, as in Thessaly of
old, it is accounted highly unfit to leave without a watch.
    Thus, in the course of a quarter of an hour or little more, he found himself
sitting a solitary guard over the inanimate corpse of her whose dismissed
spirit, unless his eyes had strangely deceived him, had so recently manifested
itself before him. Notwithstanding his natural courage, the Master was
considerably affected by a concurrence of circumstances so extraordinary. »She
died expressing her eager desire to see me. Can it be, then« - was his natural
course of reflection - »can strong and earnest wishes, formed during the last
agony of nature, survive its catastrophe, surmount the awful bounds of the
spiritual world, and place before us its inhabitants in the hues and colouring
of life? - And why was that manifested to the eye which could not unfold its
tale to the ear? - and wherefore should a breach be made in the laws of nature,
yet its purpose remain unknown? Vain questions, which only death, when it shall
make me like the pale and withered form before me, can ever resolve.«
    He laid a cloth, as he spoke, over the lifeless face, upon whose features he
felt unwilling any longer to dwell. He then took his place in an old carved
oaken chair, ornamented with his own armorial bearings, which Alice had
contrived to appropriate to her own use in the pillage which took place among
creditors, officers, domestics, and messengers of the law, when his father left
Ravenswood Castle for the last time. Thus seated, he banished, as much as he
could, the superstitious feelings which the late incident naturally inspired.
His own were sad enough, without the exaggeration of supernatural terror, since
he found himself transferred from the situation of a successful lover of Lucy
Ashton, and an honoured and respected friend of her father, into the melancholy
and solitary guardian of the abandoned and forsaken corpse of a common pauper.
    He was relieved, however, from his sad office sooner than he could
reasonably have expected, considering the distance betwixt the hut of the
deceased and the village, and the age and infirmities of three old women, who
came from thence, in military phrase, to relieve guard upon the body of the
defunct. On any other occasion the speed of these reverend sibyls would have
been much more moderate, for the first was eighty years of age and upwards
