recur, during these entrancing aberrations, to his more real causes
for terror; and he knew not, and to this day cannot distinctly
tell, whether he waked or slept, when a new circumstance absorbed
his attention. The moon struck fully, under his propped roof, upon
the carved slab he had appropriated as a hearthstone; and turning
his eye to the spot, he saw the semblance of a man advanced in
years, though not very old, standing motionless, and very steadfastly
regarding him. The still face of the figure shone like marble in
the night-beam, without giving any idea of the solidity of that
material; the long and deep shadows thrown by the forehead over the
eyes left those unusally expressive features vague and uncertain.
Upon the head was a close-fitting black cap, the dress was a
loose-sleeved, plaited garment of white, descending to the ground,
and faced and otherwise checkered with black, and girded round
the loins; exactly the costume which Shamus had often studied in
a little framed and glazed print, hung up in the sacristy of the
humble chapel recently built in the neighbourhood of the ruin by a
few descendants of the great religious fraternity to whom, in its day
of pride, the abbey had belonged. As he returned very inquisitively,
though, as he avers, not now in alarm, the fixed gaze of his midnight
visitor, a voice reached him, and he heard these strange words:

"Shamus Dempsey, go to London Bridge, and you will be a rich man."

"How will that come about, your reverence?" cried Shamus, jumping
up from the straw.

But the figure was gone; and stumbling among the black embers on the
remarkable place where it had stood, he fell prostrate, experiencing
a change of sensation and of observance of objects around, which