Early on the next morning I left Chalgrave; and finding the outer gate of the plantation closely barred with fence rails, I was about to dismount and open it, when my old nurse made her appearance, exclaiming, "Let it alone, Mass Lionel; I barred it--for I did not want you to go from home to-day till I could see you. Bad luck is hanging over our family. Is not this the seventh day of the month?--the day on which your stout old grandfather died, and on which your father sickened unto death. Did I not last night gather the wild hemlock from his grave; and with a lock of his hair, and a piece of the caul which covered your baby face, try seven times the charm which an Obi man taught my mother? Oh! it was a dreadful sight; I saw you mangled and wounded, and your white hand was red with blood. I heard an owl shriek seven times on the wall of our graveyard; it flew in at my window, put out my light, and left me in darkness. Do not go away now." "Do you still take me for a child? I must go; farewell, dear mammy." "Oh! call me dear mammy once more," she replied, "and let me kiss you for the last time." I granted her request, and rode rapidly away, while I vainly endeavored to keep down the fear and superstition with which her narrative had filled my bosom. My journey was long and tedious, and ere night I had lost myself in the mazes and tortuous paths of a forest road. On every side I was met by gates, drawbars, and _gaps_--the necessary appendages in the economy of Virginian idleness,--and wandered about until I was finally fairly lost in a broad thicket of luxuriant myrtle. Trusting to the sagacity of my horse, he brought me into an open road, at the extremity of which a feeble light caught my eye. Advancing to it, I found a crowd of negroes gathered in a cabin, and dancing with that joyous flush of elastic carelessness which a negro only feels, to the music of a banjo, triangle, and squirrel-skin fiddle. All of them offered to show me the way, and each invariably decreased the distance in proportion to the anxiety which my inquiries expressed. I took the direction which I had thus received, and late at night I passed by an old-fashioned house, from a lower window of which shot a feeble and fluttering light. Here I met a negro who informed me that I was on the Pilton plantation--that the mansion-house was before me--that he was the best axe-man on the land--that his Mass Edmund had just come home on a fine horse--and that Miss Ellen was sick and poorly. A pang of remorse passed through my bosom; and reckless of every principle of honor, I determined to approach nearer to the house, and gaze, like the pilgrim, on that shrine which held the worshipped idol of my heart. Riding rapidly away from the negro, I suddenly turned my course, and dismounting from my horse, leaped over the garden wall. Cautiously threading my path through tangled shrubbery, leafless