We often met after this in the haunted room. Indeed my spirit haunted it all day and all night long. And when we met amid the shadows, we were wrapped in the mantle of love, and from its folds looked out fearless on the ghostly world about us. Ghosts or none, they never annoyed us. Our love was a talisman, yea, an elixir of life, which made us equal to the twice-born,--the disembodied dead. And they were as a wall of fear about us, to keep far off the unfriendly foot and the prying eye. In the griefs that followed, I often thought with myself that I would gladly die for a thousand years, might I then awake for one night in the haunted chamber, a ghost, among the ghosts who crowded its stained moonbeams, and see my dead Alice smiling across the glimmering rays, and beckoning me to the old nook, she, too, having come awake out of the sleep of death, in the dream of the haunted chamber. “Might we but sit there,” I said, “through the night, as of old, and love and comfort each other, till the moon go down, and the pale dawn, which is the night of the ghosts, begin to arise, then gladly would I go to sleep for another thousand years, in the hope that when I next became conscious of life, it might be in another such ghostly night, in the chamber of the ghosts.” Chapter XVI _The Clanking Shoe_. Time passed. We began to feel very secure in that room, watched as it was by the sleepless sentry, Fear. One night I ventured to take a light with me. “How nice to have a candle!” she said as I entered. “I hope they are all in bed, though. It will drive some of them into fits if they see the light.” “I wanted to show you something I found in the library to-day.” “What is it?” I opened a book, and showed her a paper inside it, with some verses written on it. “Whose writing is that?” I asked. “Yours, of course. As if I did not know your writing!” “Will you look at the date?” “_Seventeen hundred and ninety-three.’_ You are making game of me, Duncan. But the paper does look yellow and old.” “I found it as you see it, in that book. It belonged to Lord Hilton’s brother. The verses are a translation of part of the poem beside which they lie--one by Von Salis, who died shortly before that date at the bottom. I will read them to you, and then show you something else that is strange about them. The poem is called _Psyche’s Sorrow._ Psyche means the soul, Alice.” “I remember. You told me about her before, you know.” “Psyche’s sighing all her prison darkens; She is moaning for the far-off stars; Fearing, hoping, every sound she hearkens-- Fate may now be breaking at her bars. Bound, fast bound, are Psyche’s airy pinions: High her heart, her mourning soft and low-- Knowing that in sultry pain’s dominions Grow the palms that crown the victor’s brow; That the empty hand the wreath encloses; Earth’s cold winds but make the spirit brave; Knowing that the briars bear the roses, Golden flowers the waste deserted grave.