The younger part
of the family retired to rest much after their usual hour; but the poor
wife remained up sitting by the fire, too much grieved and shocked at
the occurrence of what she had so little expected, to settle to rest. Fatigue, however, at length overcame her, and she sank gradually into an
uneasy slumber. She could not tell how long she had remained in this
state; but when she awakened, and immediately on opening her eyes, she
perceived by the faint red light of the smouldering turf embers, two
persons, one of whom she recognized as her husband, noiselessly gliding
out of the room. "Pat, darling, where are you going?" said she. There was no answer--the door closed after them; but in a moment she was
startled and terrified by a loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous
body had been hurled down the stair. [Illustration: NOISELESSLY GLIDING OUT OF THE ROOM.] Much alarmed, she started up, and going to the head of the staircase,
she called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She returned to the room, and with the assistance of her daughter, whom
I had occasion to mention before, she succeeded in finding and lighting
a candle, with which she hurried again to the head of the staircase. At the bottom lay what seemed to be a bundle of clothes, heaped
together, motionless, lifeless--it was her husband. In going down
the stairs, for what purpose can never now be known, he had fallen
helplessly and violently to the bottom, and coming head foremost, the
spine of the neck had been dislocated by the shock, and instant death
must have ensued. The body lay upon that landing-place to which his dream had referred. It is scarcely worth endeavouring to clear up a single point in a
narrative where all is mystery; yet I could not help suspecting that the
second figure which had been seen in the room by Connell's wife on the
night of his death might have been no other than his own shadow. I suggested this solution of the difficulty; but she told me that the
unknown person had been considerably in advance of her husband, and on
reaching the door, had turned back as if to communicate something to his
companion. It was, then, a mystery. [Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.] Was the dream verified?--whither had the disembodied spirit sped? who
can say? We know not. But I left the house of death that day in a state
of horror which I could not describe. It seemed to me that I was scarce
awake. I heard and saw everything as if under the spell of a nightmare. The coincidence was terrible. [Illustration]

A Chapter in the history of a Tyrone Family


In the following narrative I have endeavoured to give as nearly as
possible the _ipsissima verba_ of the valued friend from whom I received
it, conscious that any aberration from _her_ mode of telling the tale of
her own life would at once impair its accuracy and its effect. Would that, with her words, I could also bring before you her animated
gesture, the expressive countenance, the solemn and thrilling air and
accent with which she related the dark passages in her strange story;
and, above all, that I could communicate the impressive consciousness
that the narrator had seen with her own eyes, and personally acted in
the scenes which she described. These accompaniments, taken with the
additional circumstance that she who told the tale was one far too
deeply and sadly impressed with religious principle to misrepresent
or fabricate what she repeated as fact, gave to the tale a depth of
interest which the recording of the events themselves could hardly have
produced. I became acquainted with the lady from whose lips I heard this narrative
nearly twenty years since, and the story struck my fancy so much that I
committed it to paper while it was still fresh in my mind; and should
its perusal afford you entertainment for a listless half hour, my labour
shall not have been bestowed in vain. I find that I have taken the story down as she told it, in the first
person, and perhaps this is as it should be. She began as follows:

My maiden name was Richardson, the designation of a family of some
distinction in the county of Tyrone. I was the younger of two daughters,
and we were the only children. There was a difference in our ages of
nearly six years, so that I did not, in my childhood, enjoy that close
companionship which sisterhood, in other circumstances, necessarily
involves; and while I was still a child, my sister was married. The person upon whom she bestowed her hand was a Mr. Carew, a gentleman
of property and consideration in the north of England. I remember well the eventful day of the wedding; the thronging
carriages, the noisy menials, the loud laughter, the merry faces, and
the gay dresses. Such sights were then new to me, and harmonized ill
with the sorrowful feelings with which I regarded the event which was to
separate me from a sister whose tenderness alone had hitherto more than
supplied all that I wanted in my mother's affection. The day soon arrived which was to remove the happy couple from Ashtown
House. The carriage stood at the hall-door, and my poor sister kissed me
again and again, telling me that I should see her soon. The carriage drove away, and I gazed after it until my eyes filled with
tears, and, returning slowly to my chamber, I wept more bitterly and, so
to speak, more desolately, than ever I had wept before. My father had never seemed to love or to take an interest in me. He had
desired a son, and I think he never thoroughly forgave me my unfortunate
sex. My having come into the world at all as his child he regarded as a kind
of fraudulent intrusion; and as his antipathy to me had its origin in an
imperfection of mine too radical for removal, I never even hoped to
stand high in his good graces. My mother was, I dare say, as fond of me as she was of anyone; but she
was a woman of a masculine and a worldly cast of mind. She had no
tenderness or sympathy for the weaknesses, or even for the affections,
of woman's nature, and her demeanour towards me was peremptory, and
often even harsh. It is not to be supposed, then, that I found in the society of my
parents much to supply the loss of my sister. About a year after her
marriage, we received letters from Mr. Carew, containing accounts of my
sister's health, which, though not actually alarming, were calculated to
make us seriously uneasy. The symptoms most dwelt upon were loss of
appetite, and a cough. The letters concluded by intimating that he would avail himself of my
father and mother's repeated invitation to spend some time at Ashtown,
particularly as the physician who had been consulted as to my sister's
health had strongly advised a removal to her native air. There were added repeated assurances that nothing serious was
apprehended, as it was supposed that a deranged state of the liver was
the only source of the symptoms which at first had seemed to intimate
consumption.