“Away!” cried the lofty one.  “Thou hadst him living; the dead is mine.”

“Thine!” returned the other, shuddering.  “Well hast thou spoken; the dead is thine.”

The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look, but a wild-and mournful expression passed across the features of the gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark locks.  A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had bewildered her.

“Edith!” cried her rival.

Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and, removing her cheek from the dead youth’s pillow, she stood upright, fearfully encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.

“Wilt thou betray me?” said the latter, calmly.

“Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent,” answered Edith.  “Leave us alone together.  Go and live many years, and then return and tell me of thy life.  He too will be here.  Then, if thou tellest of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee.”

“And what shall be the token?” asked the proud girl, as if her heart acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.

“This lock of hair,” said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering curls that lay heavily on the dead man’s brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next meeting in that chamber.  The statelier girl gave one deep look at the motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and trembled ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon her.  And Edith, too!  Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?  Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a waxlight, which he held between her face and his own and regarded her, as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment.  Lifting his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion.  The young clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and, bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.

Years—­many years—­rolled on.  The world seemed new again, so much older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their hands across the bosom of the corpse.  In the interval a lonely woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the town as the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.”  A taint of insanity had affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had naught to do.  She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except to follow funerals.  Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and