What news from the camp-meeting at Stamford ? '' The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of people as could have been selected from all his heterogeneous auditors . Indeed , considering that we might all be classified under the general head of Vagabond , there was great diversity of character among the grave old showman , the sly , prophetic beggar , the fiddling foreigner and his merry damsel , the smart bibliopolist , the sombre Indian and myself , the itinerant novelist , a slender youth of eighteen . I even fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of the preacher 's mouth . `` Good people , '' answered he , `` the camp-meeting is broke up . '' So saying , the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode westward . Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object , we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven . The fortune-teller , giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me , departed on his Northern tour , chuckling within himself as he took the Stamford road . The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinate south-west along the sea-coast . The foreigner and the merry damsel took their laughing leave and pursued the eastern road , which I had that day trodden ; as they passed away the young man played a lively strain and the girl 's happy spirit broke into a dance , and , thus dissolving , as it were , into sunbeams and gay music , that pleasant pair departed from my view . Finally , with a pensive shadow thrown across my mind , yet emulous of the light philosophy of my late companions , I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth toward the distant city . THE WHITE OLD MAID . The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion . From one lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor ; the ghostly light through the other slept upon a bed , falling between the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man . But how quietly the slumberer lay ! how pale his features ! And how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame ! Yes , it was a corpse in its burial-clothes . Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion . Strange fantasy !
It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as the door XXXXX the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside .
about across as at between by from in into of