The young moon shed but a feeble ray, which imparted an ashy hue to earth and sky.

At this moment the tower clock lifted its harsh and grating voice. It struck twelve. The priest recalled the hour of noon— twelve hours had passed.

“Oh,” he whispered to himself, “she must be cold by now!” A sudden puff of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at the same instant, at the opposite corner of the tower, he saw a shade— a something white— a shape, a female form appear. He trembled. Beside this woman stood a little goat that mingled its bleating with the last quaverings of the clock.

He had the strength to look. It was she.

She was pale and heavy-eyed. Her hair fell round her shoulders as in the morning, but there was no rope about her neck, her hands were unbound. She was free, she was dead.

She was clad in white raiment, and a white veil was over her head.

She moved towards him slowly looking up to heaven, followed by the unearthly goat. He felt turned to stone— too petrified to fly. At each step that she advanced, he fell back— that was all. In this manner he re-entered the dark vault of the stairs. He froze at the thought that she might do the same; had she done so, he would have died of horror.

She came indeed as far as the door, halted there for some moments, gazing fixedly into the darkness, but apparently without perceiving the priest, and passed on. She appeared to him taller than he remembered her in life— he saw the moon through her white robe— he heard her breathe.

When she had passed by, he began to descend the stairs with the same slow step he had observed in the spectre— thinking himself a spectre too— haggard, his hair erect, the extinguished lamp still in his hand. And as he descended the spiral stairs he distinctly heard a voice laughing and repeating in his ears: “Then a spirit passed before my face, and I felt a little breath, and the hair of my flesh stood up.”


  By PanEris using Melati.

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