him." They knelt down beside my bed, and I saw the pure hands of those holy virgins raised to heaven in supplication for me. -I heard the voice of that gentle prioress breathing forth prayers for my soul-the lips of each one did move, but mine stirred not. In the midst of these solemn prayers, a large and shining moth flew into the chamber; it flut+ tered about the flame of the lamp; it would have been burnt, had not the younger of the nuns suddenly extinguished the light. The poor insect settled on my hand - I crushed it to nothing.O God! while the prayers of holy hearts were crying to Thee for my soul, I crushed the harmless insect which had received its life from Thee.

me.

I left the convent when I was strong enough to depart; yet my illness had greatly changed My former health seemed gone, I was an altered man, and some said that I was mad. I was not mad—but the sins of my former life had taken fast hold on me. The phantom was with me at all hours, though invisible to every eye but mine: I was never at rest, for during his absence my existence soon became

one agonising dread of his appearance. He would bring before me, with minute exactness, every scene of my past life, which I would have given worlds to have forgotten for ever. He was always, as I had been, the infamous hero of the scene, acting every look again with a truth that harrowed up my soul. If he did but beckon with his finger, I could not refuse to obey him. I rushed into every sort of dis sipation, but he accompanied me; and in the gayest circles of the court, even when the daughters of my sovereign were conversing with me, I have seen the two hands on my shoulders, and the face that was mine yet not my own, close to my face; and if by chance I stood alone in the midst of some brilliant saloon, the phantom would approach me and link his arm within mine, and look round at the company, and then point its finger in my face, and say, "They are all staring at us." Such a reality was attached to his presence, that I could never for the time persuade myself we were not observed.

- I fled to solitude

the phantom went with me.

Once, when

walking on the shore of the Mediterranean, far

from any abode of man, with a broad barren heath on one side of me, and the boundless ocean on the other. I perceived a little boat rocking to and fro on the calm waves; two men were in it, and struck, I suppose, by the richness of my dress, they landed, and attempted to rob me. I slew them both; and, scarcely knowing what I did, leaped into the empty boat, and raising the little sail, put out to sea. I sailed on, far from the sight of any shore, and began to hope that I should die upon the wide desolate waste of waters. I saw with delight the dark clouds gathering in heaps about the horizon, to the windward - I saw them spread over the whole sky. The sea rose in mountains beneath me, or dashed the little boat into chasms of black and horrible depth. The lightning rushed in streams of pale and forked fire from above; the thunder crackled, and roared in peals, which I thought would split the world around me but the death I longed for was not nigh. The storm cleared away, and the little bark floated calmly upon the quiet waters. I began to think that the phantom had quitted me, but all suddenly I beheld a hand

clasped about the side of the boat, and then the phantom climbed up leisurely into it, and sate down beside me. For days we drifted about upon the waveless sea, with a sky of dark and cloudless blue above us; the phantom all the time sitting in silence beside mé, with his eyes fixed on me never turned from me. At last his presence was so insupportable that I sprang overboard. I was not drowned · I know not how it was, but the boat came again between me and the waters; and the phantom, clasping the side, climbed in, and sate down by me. He broke silence then, and said, "Despair, but not death!" As he spoke, I felt the whole face of the sea sinking under me, and with the sinking of the smooth shining waters, the boat sank also lower and lower, deeper and deeper it sank, till at a great distance, a ridge of black rocks was gradually revealed, enclosing the waters on all sides. The boat itself sank not an inch in the sea, but the waters continued slowly sinking, till the dark rocks had risen like Alps around us; nay, even till I could look up, as from the bottom of a narrow well, and see the stars glittering as at midnight.

The phantom laughed at the consternation I betrayed. "Hell is deeper!" he shouted loudly; and his laugh and his words were echoed over and over again from the black and stupendous rocks which enclosed us, I knew nothing more, till I found myself lying amid the shattered planks of the boat, upon the shore of a foreign land. I started up, for a person was lying close beside me. I was for the moment all bewildered, but the person lying at my feet stretched his limbs, as one awaking from a heavy slumber, and yawning, as he slowly thrust away the thick long hair which had fallen over his eyes, he looked full in my face and said, "I cannot sleep :”—I recognised at once the voice, the face, which were mine, yet not my own. I had been cast upon the coast of Africa; and for more than two years I was obliged to labour, beneath a sun like molten brass, as a common slave. I suffered every hardship. In the town where I lived, at one time the plague raged with dreadful virulence, and though I never caught it, I crawled about, almost exhausted, as the attendant of the dying wretches around me. I was