volume of sound, inasmuch as they could be audible to nobody save
a disembodied listener like ourself. The Old Maid was alone in
the old house. Alone, except for a certain respectable and orderly
young man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for about
three months back, had been a lodger in a remote gable,--quite a
house by itself, indeed,--with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on
all the intervening doors. Inaudible, consequently, were poor
Miss Hepzibah's gusty sighs. Inaudible the creaking joints of
her stiffened knees, as she knelt down by the bedside. And
inaudible, too, by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending
love and pity in the farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer
--now whispered, now a groan, now a struggling silence--wherewith
she besought the Divine assistance through the day Evidently, this
is to be a day of more than ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who,
for above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict
seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as
little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such fervor
prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless,
stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays.

The maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she now issue
forth over the threshold of our story? Not yet, by many moments.
First, every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be
opened, with difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks
then, all must close again, with the same fidgety reluctance.
There is a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and
forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect Miss
Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, in order
to give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at full
length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that hangs above