Uncle Silas

net in his library, as already detailed, that I was one night sitting at the great drawing-room window, lost in the melancholy reveries of night, and in admirat

oblest timber in England. Hoar in the moonbeams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass, and in the background crown

at mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious

very early association, there was to me

wo days before the funeral, there came to Knowl, where she died, a

to say, "It is rather odd to see him praying with that little scarecrow from London, and good M

some reason, for a walk; my governess was ill, I know, and there was confusion

lence to the balustrade. The base was too high at the spot where we reached it for me to see over; but holding my hand, he said, "Look through that, my child. Well, you can't; but I can see beyond it - shall I tell you what? I see ever so much. I see a cottage with a steep roof, that looks like gold in the sunlight; there are tall trees throwing soft shadows round it, and flowering shrubs, I can

rim walls of evergreens. The way was in deep shadow, for the sun was near the horizon; but suddenly

e rosy boys - who assented; and he leaned with his open hand against the ste

hat both the vision and the story were quite tr

sit down to rest, and he in a musing solemn sort of way would relate some little story, reflecting, even to my childish mind, a strange suspicion of

grey, pillared temple, four-fronted, with a slanting pedestal of lichen-stained steps, the lonely sepulchre in which I had the morning before seen poor mamma laid. At the sight the fountains of my grief

ry kindly and gently. "Now, what do you see there?" he asked, pointing

at place where

lars, too high for either y

s tenets and revelations; I only know that it sounded to me like the name of a magician in a fairy ta

rough it, and has told me all that concerns

e building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was afraid to ap

ich Mary, in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she s

bout the little boys and the cottage, and the trees and flowers which you could not see, but believed in when I told you. So I can tell you now as I did then; and as we ar

is narrative we were to walk on through the wood into that

rejoicing, my mother moved along an airy path, ascending among mountains of fantastic height, and peaks, melting in celestial colouring into the air, and peopled with human beings translated into

r, let us

w," I said, resisting, a

scribed. We can only reach it through the gate of death, t

whisper, as we walked together, holding his hand very f

in the wilderness, and she beheld a fountain of water, so shall ea

tern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation: "I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the w

on. All outside was and is darkness. I once tried to read one of their books upon the future state - heaven and hell; but I grew after a day or two so nervous that I laid it aside. It is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or f

le with the visionary, I fancied the gate of death, hidden only by a strange glamour, and the dazzling land of ghosts, were situate; an