It was past midnight, yet Alice sat, solitary and watchful, at her little casement. One fair white arm supported her cheek, and she was gazing listlessly on the silver clouds as they floated in liquid brightness across the full round disc of the moon, then high in the meridian. Her thoughts were not on the scene she beheld. The mellow sound of the waterfalls, the murmur from the river, came on with the breeze, rising and falling like the deep pathos of some wild and mysterious music. Memory, that busy enchanter, was at work; and the scenes she had lately witnessed, so full of disquietude and mystery, mingled with the returning tide of past and almost forgotten emotions. We have said that the prevailing bent or bias of her disposition was that of romance; and this idol of the imagination, this love of strange and enervating excitement, had not been repressed by the occurrences of the last few hours; on the contrary, she felt as though some wondrous event was impending--some adventure which she alone should achieve--some power that her own arm should contend with and subdue. She took the billet from her bosom; the moonlight alone fell upon it; but the words were so indeliby fixed upon her imagination that she fancied she could trace every word on that mystic tablet. "To-morrow, at midnight, in the haunted chamber! If thou hast courage, tarry there a while. Its occupant will protect thee."--['Wherefore am I so bent on this adventure? To visit the beggar in his lair!' thought she; and again she threw her eyes on the billet.] "Peril threatens thine house, which thy coming can alone prevent. Shouldest thou reveal but one word of this warning, thy life, and those dear to thee, will be the forfeit. From thine unknown monitor, "THESE." The guest in the boggart-chamber was Noman, to whom it had been allotted, and though he told of terrible sights and harrowing disclosures, he seemed to brave them all with unflinching hardihood, and even exulted in their repetition. To remain an hour or two with such a companion was in itself a sufficiently novel adventure; but that harm could come from such a source scarcely entered her imagination. A feeling of irrepressible curiosity stimulated her, and prevailed over every other consideration. It was not like spending the time alone; this certainly would have been a formidable condition to have annexed. Besides, would it not be a wicked and a wanton thing to shrink from difficulty or danger when the welfare and even life of one so dear as her brother, peradventure, depended on her compliance. Another feeling, too, more complicated, and a little more selfish it might be, was the hidden cause to which her inclinations might be traced.