A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.  Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement.  She rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of herself.  And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur, so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as if it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the lullaby of her fair young mother.

So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and the low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept, dreaming of the murmuring ocean.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.

Myrtle hazard’s statement.

“A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June 15, 1859.  Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections.

“The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told since, Witches’ Hollow.  I had never been there before, and did not know that it was called so, or anything about it.

“The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of hill or mound that rose out of the low meadows.  I saw a burning cross lying on the slope of that mound.  It burned with a pale greenish light, and did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I was in moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing.

“I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking at this cross.  I think my eyes were open when I saw these other appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake.

“I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were outside of myself.

“The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as if without any effort.  They made many gestures, and seemed to speak, but I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in some other way.

“I knew the faces of some of these figures.  They were the same I have seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where I was brought up, called The Poplars.  I saw my father and my mother as they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great while ago.  All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had been dead the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows, so that the oldest was like one’s breath of a frosty morning, but shaped like the living figure.

“There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be moving as if they were saying, Breath!  Breath!  Breath!  I thought they wanted to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I seemed to see as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like a sponge that has water pressed out of it.