for a minute, seeing he was angry, and gave him the key, when she heard him utter a scream, and saw him fall across the door-way;--that she hurried to raise him, _hoping_ it was a fit;--that she found him stiff and stretched out, and called for help to lift him up;--that then people came from the kitchen to assist;--that she was so bewildered and terrified, she hardly knew what was done or said; but with all her terror remembered, that as they raised him up, the first sign of life he gave was lifting up his arm, and pointing it towards the court, and at that moment she saw the figure of a tall man cross the court, and go out of the court, she knew not where or how, for the outer gate was locked, and had not been opened for years, and they were all gathered round his honor at the other door;--she saw the figure,--she saw the shadow on the wall,--she saw him walk slowly through the court, and in her terror cried, “Stop him,” but nobody minded her, all being busy about her master; and when he was brought to his room, nobody thought but of getting him to himself again. And further she could not tell. His honor (young Melmoth) knew as much as she,--he had witnessed his last illness, had heard his last words, he saw him die,--how could she know more than his honor.” “True,” said Melmoth, “I certainly saw him die; but--you say _there was an odd story in the family_, do you know any thing about it?” “Not a word, it was long before my time, as old as I am.” “Certainly it must have been so; but, was my uncle ever superstitious, fanciful?”--and Melmoth was compelled to use many synonymous expressions, before he could make himself understood. When he did, the answer was plain and decisive, “No, never, never. When his honor sat in the kitchen in winter, to save a fire in his own room, he could never bear the talk of the old women that came in to light their pipes _betimes_, (from time to time). He used to shew such impatience of their superstitious nonsense, that they were fain to smoke them in silence, without the consolatory accompaniment of one whisper about a child that the evil eye had looked on, or another, that though apparently a mewling, peevish, crippled brat all day, went regularly out at night to dance with the _good people_ on the top of a neighbouring mountain, summoned thereto by the sound of a bag-pipe, which was unfailingly heard at the cabin door every night.” Melmoth’s thoughts began to take somewhat of a darker hue at this account. If his uncle was not superstitious, might he not have been guilty, and might not his strange and sudden death, and even the terrible visitation that preceded it, have been owing to some wrong that his rapacity had done the widow and the fatherless. He questioned the old woman indirectly and cautiously on the subject,--her answer completely justified the deceased. “He was a man,” she said, “of a hard hand, and a hard heart, but he was as jealous of another’s right as of his own.