"I am, indeed, half mad," returned Edric, with a melancholy smile; "and yet, perhaps, you will laugh when I tell you the reason of my uneasiness. I am tormented by an earnest desire to communicate with one who has been an inhabitant of the tomb. I would fain know the secrets of the grave, and ascertain whether the spirit be chained after death to its earthly covering of clay, condemned till the day of final resurrection to hover over the rotting mass of corruption that once contained it; or whether the last agonies of death free it from its mortal ties, and leave it floating, free as air, in the bright regions of ethereal space?" "You know my opinion," said the doctor. "I do," replied the pupil; "but forgive me if I add--I do not feel satisfied with it: in fact mine is not a character to be satisfied with building my faith upon that of any other man. I would see, and judge for myself." "I do not blame you," resumed the doctor; "a reasonable being should believe nothing he cannot prove;--however, to remove your doubts, I am convinced we have only occasion to step into the adjoining church-yard, and try my galvanic battery of fifty surgeon power, (which you must allow is surely enough to re-animate the dead,) upon a body, and then----" "Hold! hold!" cried Edric, shuddering. "My blood freezes in my veins, at the thought of a church-yard:--your words recall a horrible dream that I had last night, which, even now, dwells upon my mind, and resists all the efforts I can make to shake it off." "Tell it to me, then," resumed the doctor; "for when the imagination is possessed by horrible fantasies, it is often relieved by speaking of them to another person." "I thought," said Edric, "that I was wandering in a thick gloomy wood, through which I had the utmost difficulty to make my way. The black trees, frowning in awful majesty above my head, twined together in masses, so as almost to obstruct my path. Suddenly, a fearful light flashed upon me, and I saw at my feet a horrid charnel house, where the dying mingled terrifically with the dead. The miserable living wretches turned and writhed with pain, striving in vain to escape from the mass of putrescence heaped upon them. I saw their eye-balls roll in agony--I watched the distortion of their features, and, making a violent effort to relieve one who had almost crawled to my feet, I shrank back with horror as I found the arm I grasped give way to my touch, and a disgusting mass of corruption crumble beneath my fingers!--Shuddering I awoke--a cold sweat hanging upon my brows, and every nerve thrilling with convulsive agony." "Mere visionary terrors," said the doctor. "You have suffered your imagination to dwell upon one subject, till it is become morbid.--However, though I do not see any reason why your dream should make you decline my offer, I will not urge it if it give you pain."