At last I attained to that state of repose which the renowned Sancho Panza has so felicitously eulogized, and successfully immortalized; but my enjoyment was not of long duration. It was but a short distance that reached into the middle of the dark, dismal night, and time had travelled it when I slowly awoke. Shivers of terror, from some undefined cause, crept over me. Gradually I came to a knowledge of what was passing. My hair, which was thrown loosely over the pillow, was moving as though trodden by some nocturnal agent of locomotion. What moved it? there was no draft of air in the room. I put my hand to the "crowning ornament by Nature given" to my head, and imprisoned a mammoth mouse, or scarce grown rat. I was fast getting initiated into the mysteries of prison life, and inured to its peculiarities. Unmoved, I might allow my hair to become a bed for rats and mice; but I could not spare the sleep. I threw the creature from me, in a fret at being disturbed, and issued a peremptory order, independent of the Master, and without the approval of the Board, for all rats and mice to pay respect to my person, and my apartments, and trouble me no more. Then I turned over, and went to sleep again. Adverse fate, or some other mysterious personage was on my track that night. Before I had time to close my eyes, a shrill shriek of horror resounded through the building, starting the echoes from every side. It sounded in my ears like the despairing cry of one doomed to eternal death. Imagination supplied the cause, and brought me to my feet with one bound. Some pent up prisoner was dying alone in his cell. I sprang to the rail and called,-- "What is the matter?" "I think I had the nightmare. I do have it sometimes." "Was that you, Mary McCullum?" "I think it was, ma'am. I'm sorry I waked you! Never mind me, ma'am!" Poor Mary McCullum! In a moment I remembered all about her. They had told me a sad tale about her incarceration for the murder of her rival. Mary's husband had left her, taking her three little girls away, and married another woman. Mary, in a fit of jealous madness, had ground up a knife, enticed the woman to drink with her, and murdered her in her cellar. A policeman had detected her in the act. God pity, and judge her! She had been sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the Penitentiary for the crime. Five years had been worked out. Her health was gone, her nervous system had become a wreck. The damp rooms, the chilling stones, the ceaseless toil, were the slow torture that had undermined her constitution, and consumed her vitality. Her narrow cell had become, to her imagination, the home of demons who haunted her with her crime. The other women had told me that the ghost of the murdered woman came to Mary McCullum every night, all in her bloody garments, and set her shrieking in her dreams.