But whether he bethought himself, after her death, that this was a very selfish mode of loving; or whether, as some thought, he had wearied out her life with habits so contrary to her own; or whether, as others reported, he had put it to a fatal risk by some lordly piece of self-will, in consequence of which she had caught a fever on the cold river during a night of festivity; he surprised even those who thought that he loved her, by the extreme bitterness of his grief. The very mention of festivity, though he was patient for the first day or two, afterwards threw him into a passion of rage; but by degrees even his rage followed his other old habits. He was gentle, but ever silent. He ate and drank but sufficient to keep him alive; and he used to spend the greater part of the day in the spot where his wife was buried.

He was going there one evening, in a very melancholy manner, with his eyes turned towards the earth, and had just entered the rails of the burial-ground, when he was accosted by the mild voice of somebody coming to meet him. "It is a blessed evening, Sir," said the voice. The gentleman looked up. Nobody but himself was allowed to be in the place at that hour; and yet he saw, with astonishment, a young chorister approaching him. He was going to express some wonder, when, he said, the modest though assured look of the boy, and the extreme beauty of his countenance, which glowed in the setting sun before him, made an irresistible addition to the singular sweetness of his voice and he asked him with an involuntary calmness, and a gesture of respect, not what he did there, but what he wished. "Only to wish you all good things," answered the stranger, who had now come up, "and to give you this letter." The gentleman took the letter, and saw upon it, with a beating yet scarcely bewildered heart, the handwriting of his wife. He raised his eyes again to speak to the boy, but he was gone. He cast them far and near round the place, but there were no traces of a passenger. He then opened the letter; and by the divine light of the setting sun, read these words:

"To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife :

"Otto, my husband, the soul you regret so is returned. You

will know the truth of this, and be prepared with calmness to see it, by the divineness of the messenger, who has passed you. You will find me sitting in the public walk, praying for you: praying, that you may never more give way to those gusts of passion, and those curses against others, which divided us.

"This, with a warm hand, from the living Bertha."

Otto (for such, it seems, was the gentleman's name) went instantly, calmly, quickly, yet with a sort of benumbed being, to the public walk. He felt, but with only a half-consciousness, as if he glided without a body. But all his spirit was awake, eager, intensely conscious. It seemed to him as if there had been but two things in the world-Life and Death; and that Death was dead. All else appeared to have been a dream. He had awaked from a waking state, and found himself all eye, and spirit, and locomotion. He said to himself, once, as he went: "This is not a dream. I will ask my great ancestors to-morrow to my new bridal feast, for they are alive." Otto had been calm at first, but something of old and triumphant feelings seemed again to come over him. Was he again too proud and confident? Did his earthly humors prevail again, when he thought them least upon him? We shall see.

peo

The Bavarian arrived at the public walk. It was full of ple with their wives and children, enjoying the beauty of the evening. Something like common fear came over him, as he went in and out among them, looking at the benches on each side. It happened that there was only one person, a lady, sitting upon them. She had her veil down; and his being underwent a fierce but short convulsion, as he went near her. Something had a little baffled the calmer inspiration of the angel that had accosted him for fear prevailed at the instant, and Otto passed He returned before he had reached the end of the walk, and approached the lady again. She was still sitting in the same quiet posture, only he thought she looked at him. Again he passed her. On his second return, a grave and sweet courage came upon him, and in an under but firm tone of inquiry, he said, 'Bertha ?"—"I thought you had forgotten me," said that welk known and mellow voice, which he had seemed as far from ever

on.

hearing again as earth is from heaven. He took her hand, which grasped his in turn; and they walked home in silence together, the arm, which was wound within his, giving warmth for warmth.

The neighbors seemed to have a miraculous want of wonder at the lady's re-appearance. Something was said about a mock funeral, and her having withdrawn from his company for awhile; but visitors came as before, and his wife returned to her household affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before; and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great internal thought, than of unhappiness.

For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper which he acquired. His fortunes flourished beyond his earliest ambition; the most amiable as well as noble persons of the district were frequent visitors; and people said, that to be at Otto's house, must be the next thing to being in heaven. But by degrees his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented impatience on his wife; but he again began to show, that the disquietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary thing, in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, so he held himself secure if he treated her well; or whether he was at all times rather proud of her, than fond; or whatever was the cause which again set his antipathies above his sympathies, certain it was, that his old habits returned upon him; not so often, indeed, but with greater violence and pride when they did. These were the only times, at which his wife was observed to show any ordinary symptoms of uneasiness.

At length, one day, some strong rebuff which he had received from an alienated neighbor threw him into such a transport of rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying with a loud voice-"This treatment to me too! To me! To me, who if the world knew all"- -At these words his wife, who had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary earnestness in the face, suddenly glided from the room., He and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly; but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After

a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He made a movement of despair; but they went. There was a short passage, which turned to the right into her favorite room. They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no answer. At last one of them gently opened it; and looking in, they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather to be in the middle of the room; only the face was towards the fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but received no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still received none. The figure stood dumb and unmoved. At last, one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of a face. The clothes were standing upright by themselves.

That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might be so, to moulder away. It was called the Room of the Lady's Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long uninhabited, and at length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since; and nobody would venture to go near him, but a man who had the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who would accept them; for most of the neighbors held them in horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it; and the matter was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, said one day that he would have a child of his own on purpose. His employer, however, died in a day or two. They did not believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, looking upon the latter as a sort of Ogre, and upon his agent as little better, though a good-natured looking earnest kind of person. It was said many years after, that this man had been a friend of the Bavarian's when young, and had been deserted by him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might do.

CHAPTER XX.

Thieves, Ancient and Modern.

HAVING met in the Harleian Miscellany with an account of a pet thief of ours, the famous Du Vall, who flourished in the time of Charles the Second, and wishing to introduce him worthily to the readers, it has brought to mind such a number of the lightfingered gentry, his predecessors, that we almost feel hustled by the thoughts of them. Our subject, we may truly fear, will run away with us. We feel beset, like poor Tasso in his dungeon; and are not sure that our paper will not suddenly be conveyed away from under our pen. Already we miss some excellent remarks, which we should have made in this place. If the reader should meet with any of that kind hereafter, upon the like subject, in another man's writings, twenty to one they are stolen from us, and ought to have enriched this our plundered exordium. He that steals an author's purse, may emphatically be said to steal trash; but he that filches from him his good things -Alas, we thought our subject would be running away with us. We must keep firm. We must put something heavier in our remarks, as the little thin Grecian philosopher used to put lead in his pockets, lest the wind should steal him.

The more ruffianly crowd of thieves should go first, as pioneers; but they can hardly be looked upon as progenitors of our gentle Du Vall; and besides, with all their ferocity, some of them assume a grandeur, from standing in the remote shadows of antiquity. There was the famous son, for instance, of Vul. can and Medusa, whom Virgil calls the dire aspect of half-human Cacus-Semihominis Cacifacies dira. (Eneid, B.VIII., V. 194.) He was the raw-head-and-bloody-bones of ancient fable. He lived in a cave by Mount Aventine, breathing out fiery smoke, and haunting king Evander's highway like the Apollyon of Pilgrim's Progress.