coat, he advanced along the defile of wildly staring faces. He advanced
with a slow and stately step, looked neither to the right nor the left,
but went solemnly forward on his now faintly illuminated way, sounding
his cane on the floor as he passed. The faces in the doorways curdled
his blood by their rooted looks. Glued to the spot, they seemed
incapable of motion. Each one was silent as he advanced towards him or
her, but as he left each individual, one after another, behind, each in
a frenzy shrieked out, "The Squire, the Squire!" As he passed the lady
in the widow's weeds, she fell senseless and crosswise before him. But
forced to be immutable in his purpose, Israel, solemnly stepping over
her prostrate form, marched deliberately on.

In a few minutes more he had reached the main door of the mansion, and
withdrawing the chain and bolt, stood in the open air. It was a bright
moonlight night. He struck slowly across the open grounds towards the
sunken fields beyond. When-midway across the grounds, he turned towards
the mansion, and saw three of the front windows filled with white faces,
gazing in terror at the wonderful spectre. Soon descending a slope, he
disappeared from their view.

Presently he came to hilly land in meadow, whose grass having been
lately cut, now lay dotting the slope in cocks; a sinuous line of creamy
vapor meandered through the lowlands at the base of the hill; while
beyond was a dense grove of dwarfish trees, with here and there a tall
tapering dead trunk, peeled of the bark, and overpeering the rest. The
vapor wore the semblance of a deep stream of water, imperfectly
descried; the grove looked like some closely-clustering town on its
banks, lorded over by spires of churches.

The whole scene magically reproduced to our adventurer the aspect of