and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining room with a step as
noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as he was
with watching, he had no thought of sleep. He sat himself down by the
little table, and leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully. Thus
time passed. He heard the clock from below strike the hours. In the
house of death the sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul that we
miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe
gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes
with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone; the gray,
comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw,
chilling light through the open doorway into the death-room. And there,
near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low;
and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort; she pressed
his hand, but waved him away. He understood. She did not wish for other
comfort than her quiet relief of tears. Again, he returned to his own
chamber, and his eye this time fell upon the papers which he had hitherto
disregarded. What made his heart stand still, and the blood then rush so
quickly through his veins? Why did he seize upon those papers with so
tremulous a hand, then lay them down, pause, as if to nerve himself, and
look so eagerly again? He recognized the handwriting,--those fair, clear
characters, so peculiar in their woman-like delicacy and grace, the same
as in the wild, pathetic poems, the sight of which had made an era in his
boyhood. From these pages the image of the mysterious Nora rose once
more before him. He felt that he was with a mother. He went back, and
closed the door gently, as if with a jealous piety, to exclude each ruder
shadow from the world of spirits, and be alone with that mournful ghost.
For a thought written in warm, sunny life, and then suddenly rising up to
us, when the hand that traced and the heart that cherished it are dust,
is verily as a ghost. It is a likeness struck off of the fond human
being, and surviving it. Far more truthful than bust or portrait, it