"What is it, dear Lyon?" inquired Sybil, anxiously looking over his shoulder. "Good Heaven! It is the family vault of the wicked old Dubarrys, who once owned all the land hereabouts, except the Black Valley Manor, and who built this chapel for their sins; for of them it might not be said with truth, that 'all their sons were true, and all their daughters pure,' but just exactly the reverse. However, they are well forgotten now!" "And this is their family vault?" "Yes; but I had almost forgotten its existence here." "Lyon, can my mysterious visitor have hidden herself in that vault?" "I can search it, at any rate," answered Mr. Berners, wrenching away at the grated door. But it resisted all his efforts, as if its iron bars had been bedded in the solid masonry. "No," he answered; "your visitor, if you had one, could not possibly have entered here. See how fast the door is." "Lyon," whispered Sybil, in a deep and solemn voice, "Lyon, could she possibly have come out from there?" "Nonsense, dear! Are you thinking of ghosts?" "This is the 'Haunted Chapel,' you know," whispered Sybil. "Bosh, my dear; you are not silly enough to believe that!" "But my strange visitor?" "You had no visitor, dear Sybil; you had a dream, and your dream had every feature of nightmare in it--the deep, death-like, yet half-conscious and much disturbed sleep; the sense of heavy oppression; the apparition hanging over you; the inability to awake; even the grappling at your throat, and the swift disappearance of the vision immediately upon your full awakening--all well-known features of incubus," replied Mr. Berners. But again he thought of the shadow he had seen; now, however, only to dismiss the subject as an optical illusion. Sybil sighed deeply. "It is hard," she said, "that you won't trust to my senses in this affair." "Sweet wife, I would rather convince you how completely your senses have deceived you. Your imagination has been excited while your nerves were depressed. You have heard the legend of the Haunted Chapel, and while sleeping within it you conjured up the heroine of the story in your dream where she immediately took the form of incubus." "I!--the legend! What are you talking of, Lyon? I have heard the church called the Haunted Chapel indeed, but I never even knew that there was any story connected with it," exclaimed Sybil, in surprise. "Really? Never heard the legend of 'Dubarry's Fall'?" inquired Mr. Berners, with equal surprise. "Never, upon my word." "Well, it is an old tradition; forgotten like the family with whom it was connected. I heard it in my childhood; but it had slipped my memory until your graphic description of the gipsy girl in the red cloak recalled it to my mind, and led me to believe that your knowledge of the legend had so impressed your imagination as to make it conjure up the heroine of the legend." "What is the legend? Do tell me, Lyon."