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 of the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside . Was there delusion in the moonbeams , or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as she bent over the pale corpse , pale as itself , and pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead ? As she drew back from that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish . Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive to her own . Still an illusion .
The silken curtains had waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight XXXXX another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside .
as at by from into on that through upon with