a sorrowing angel. But, the more heavenly she was, the more hateful did
she seem to Richard Digby, who at length raised his hand, and smote down
the cup of hallowed water upon the threshold of the cave, thus rejecting
the only medicine that could have cured his stony heart. A sweet perfume
lingered in the air for a moment, and then was gone.

"Tempt me no more, accursed woman," exclaimed he, still with his marble
frown, "lest I smite thee down also! What hast thou to do with my
Bible?--what with my prayers?--what with my heaven?"

No sooner had he spoken these dreadful words, than Richard Digby's heart
ceased to beat; while--so the legend says-the form of Mary Goffe melted
into the last sunbeams, and returned from the sepulchral cave to heaven.
For Mary Golfe had been buried in an English churchyard, months before;
and either it was her ghost that haunted the wild forest, or else a
dream-like spirit, typifying pure Religion.

Above a century afterwards, when the trackless forest of Richard Digby's
day had long been interspersed with settlements, the children of a
neighboring farmer were playing at the foot of a hill. The trees, on
account of the rude and broken surface of this acclivity, had never been
felled, and were crowded so densely together as to hide all but a few
rocky prominences, wherever their roots could grapple with the soil. A
little boy and girl, to conceal themselves from their playmates, had
crept into the deepest shade, where not only the darksome pines, but a
thick veil of creeping plants suspended from an overhanging rock,
combined to make a twilight at noonday, and almost a midnight at all
other seasons. There the children hid themselves, and shouted, repeating
the cry at intervals, till the whole party of pursuers were drawn
thither, and, pulling aside the matted foliage, let in a doubtful glimpse