recovered a measure of physical health, after a time, but his reason was
hopelessly lost.

It was his hallucination that the girl was not dead, but had been exiled
to the lonely reaches of this watery wilderness. He was heard to mutter,
"I'll find her, and when Death comes I'll hide her in the hollow of a
cypress until he passes on." Evading restraint, he plunged into the fen,
and for some days he wandered there, eating berries, sleeping on tussocks
of grass, with water-snakes crawling over him and poisonous plants
shedding their baneful dew on his flesh. He came to the lake at last. A
will-o'the-wisp played along the surface. "'Tis she!" he cried. "I see
her, standing in the light." Hastily fashioning a raft of cypress boughs
he floated it and pushed toward the centre of the pond, but the eagerness
of his efforts and the rising of a wind dismembered the frail platform,
and he fell into the black water to rise no more. But often, in the
night, is seen the wraith of a canoe, with a fire-fly lamp burning on its
prow, restlessly urged to and fro by two figures that seem to be vainly
searching for an exit from the place, and that are believed to be those
of the maiden and her lover.




THE BARGE OF DEFEAT

Rappannock River, in Virginia, used to be vexed with shadowy craft that
some of the populace affirmed to be no boats, but spirits in disguise.
One of these apparitions was held in fear by the Democracy of Essex
County, as it was believed to be a forerunner of Republican victory. The
first recorded appearance of the vessel was shortly after the Civil War,