Returning to the boarding-house, we pulled off our boots and noiselessly ascended the outside steps, the door at the head of which we had left open. There was a short passage leading from it to the door of our room, which we had left closed, but now perceived to be ajar. Silently, as a doctor speaking of the patients he has lost, we approached it, and, on peeping in, to our great gratification found everything working as we had desired. The widow had got the package out, and was occupied in viewing it attentively from all sides, and studying the character of the knots of the ligatures embracing it, so she could restore everything to its original condition, when her curiosity was satisfied as to its contents. Having impressed its shape, and the peculiarity of tie, well upon her mind, she proceeded to take off the first cover, which was soon done, when a similar envelope met her eye; this, after undergoing the same scrutiny, was removed, when yet another met her gaze; this detached, and still the kernel was unreached; some six or eight were taken off, and at length she came to the last, the oil-skin. Poor old lady! she has long been where the curiosity of life never penetrates, and the grandest and most awful mystery of our nature is revealed; yet, I see her now, as the last envelope of the mysterious package was reached, and when a gleam of satisfaction shot like an erysipelatous blush over her anxious face, as she saw the consummation of her long expectancy approaching. There she stood, with spectacles buried so deeply 'neath her brows as almost to appear a portion of her visage; neck--not of apoplectic proportions--elongated to its utmost capacity; lips--from which the ruby of youth had departed,--wide disclosed,--showing what our swamp lands are famous for--big gums and old snags; in fact, the embodiment of woman in her hour of curiosity. Holding the package in one hand and the end of the oil-cloth in the other, she commenced unrolling it slowly, for fear some peculiarity of its arrangement might escape her; her back was towards the door, which we had nearly opened awide, and anxiously awaiting the _denouement_; it came at last,--and never shall I forget the expression of that old woman's face as the last roll left the hellish countenance, and it lay in all its awful hideousness upon her extended palm,--the fiendish tushes protruding from the parted lips,--still wearing the agony of the death-second,--and the eyes enclosed in their circle of red, gazing up into hers with their dull vacant stare. Ay, but she was a firm-nerved woman. If metempsychosis be a true doctrine, her spirit must have once animated, in the chivalrous times, a steel-clad knight of the doughtiest mould. She did not faint--did not vent a scream--but gazed upon its awfulness in silence, as if her eyes were riveted to it for ever.