Poor Isabel, well-nigh insensible--for grief and terror, added to cold and fatigue, had prostrated all her energies, bodily and mental--was carried to the town and lodged in the house of an acquaintance. When morning came she was unable to leave her bed, and so the saddler had to set out for Minitarf alone, which he reached about noon; and on being recognised as a cousin of the deceased, he was ushered into the room where the body lay. He seated himself on the edge of the bed, and raising the coffin-lid, gazed for a few seconds on the face of the dead; on hearing a footstep approaching the door, he replaced the cover. There entered a genteel-looking young man dressed for the funeral; but not the apparition of an inhabitant of the other world would have started the saddler more. He recognised in the stranger the young man of his dream. Another person entered, and him he also recognised as the man who had shaken hands with him; and who now, on being introduced to him as a relative of the deceased tacksman of Minitarf, sure enough, grasped him warmly by the hand. As the room filled around him with the neighbouring farmers attired in their soberest and best, he felt as if he still dreamed, for these were the very men whom he had seen in the old castle; and it was almost mechanically, when the coffin was carried out and laid on the bier, that, as the nearest relative of the dead he took his place as chief mourner. As the funeral proceeded, however, he collected his scattered thoughts. “Have I indeed had experience,” said he to himself, “of one of those mysterious intimations of coming evil, the bare possibility of which few thinking men, in these latter times, seem disposed to credit on testimony alone? And little wonder, truly, that they should be so sceptical; for, for what purpose could such a warning have been given? It has enabled me to ward off no impending disaster;--nay, it has told its story so darkly and doubtfully, that the event alone has enabled me to interpret it. Could a purpose so idle have employed an agent of the invisible world? And yet,” thought he again, as the train of his cogitations found way into the deeper recesses of his mind, “an end _has_ been accomplished by it, and a not unimportant end either. The evil has befallen as certainly and heavily as if there had been no previous warning; but, is _my mind_ in every respect the same? Something _has_ been accomplished. And surely He who in His providence cares for all my bodily wants, without sinking, in the littleness of the object cared for, aught of the _greatness_ of His character, might, without lessening in aught His character for _wisdom_, have taken this way of making me see, more distinctly than in all my life before, that there is indeed an invisible world, and that all the future is known to Him.” There was seriousness in the thought, and never did he feel more strongly that the present scene of things is not the last, than when