“That is generous in you, and deserves a better fate.  But you are so figurative in all you say, that a stranger would think you had no real feeling,—­and only fancied yourself in love.”

“Expression of feeling is different with different minds.  It is not always simple.  Some minds, when excited, naturally speak in figures and similitudes.  They do not on that account feel less deeply.  This is obvious in our commonest modes of speech.  It depends upon the individual.”

“Kyrie Eleeson!”

“Well, abuse my figures of speech as much as you please.  What I insist upon is, that you shall not abuse the lady.  When did you ever hear me breathe a whisper against her?”

“Oho!  Now you speak like Launce to his dog!”

Their conversation, which had begun so merrily, was here suddenly interrupted by a rattling peal of thunder, that announced a near-approaching storm.  It was late in the afternoon, and the whole heaven black with low, trailing clouds.  Still blacker the storm came sailing up majestically from the southwest, with almost unbroken volleys of distant thunder.  The wind seemed to be storming a cloud redoubt; and marched onward with dust, and the green banners of the trees flapping in the air, and heavy cannonading, and occasionally an explosion, like the blowing up of a powder-wagon.  Mingled with this was the sound of thunder-bells from a village not far off.  They were all ringing dolefully to ward off the thunderbolt.  At the entrance of the village stood a large wooden crucifix; around which was a crowd of priests and peasants, kneeling in the wet grass, by the roadside, with their hands and eyes lifted toheaven, and praying for rain.  Their prayer was soon answered.

The travellers drove on with the driving wind and rain.  They had come from Landeck, and hoped to reach Innsbruck before midnight.  Night closed in, and Flemming fell asleep with the loud storm overhead, and at his feet the roaring Inn, a mountain torrent leaping onward as wild and restless, as when it first sprang from its cradle in the solitudes of Engaddin; meet emblem of himself, thus rushing through the night.  His slumber was long, but broken; and at length he awoke in terror; for he heard a voice pronounce in his ear distinctly these words;

“They have brought the dead body.”

They were driving by a churchyard at the entrance of a town; and among the tombs a dim lamp was burning before an image of the Virgin.  It had a most unearthly appearance.  Flemming almost feared to see the congregation of the dead go into the church and sing their midnight mass.  He spoke to Berkley; but received no answer; he was in a deep sleep.

“Then it was only a dream,” said he to himself; “yet how distinct the voice was!  O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies,—­should behold them streaming up like thin vapors heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel’s trump sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the awful judgment day.  Truly the soul departs not alone on its last journey, but spirits of its kind attend it, when not ministering angels; and they go in families to the unknown land!  Neither in life nor in death are we alone.”