A NIGHT r IS IT ANT. 323 



and deposits its dusky form upon the snow-white dresser. 

 Deborah can only dimly discern it by the help of the moon. 

 " Oh, for a light !" she inwardly* ejaculates ; but evening is 

 warm, the grate is cold, and the damsel dares not stir. 



At length, however, in some way or another the candle 

 is relit. With trembling hand she places it on the dresser, to 

 " show up " the characters of her alarming visitant, who ever 

 and anon continues to salute her with its mournful wail. 



Deborah is a country girl, and has therefore learnt, of course, 

 to distinguish betwixt a butterfly and a black beetle ; and she 

 thought, till this awful moment, that she knew, quite as 

 well, the difference between a brown moth and a spirit, black, 

 white, or grey. That the thing upon her dresser is a moth, of 

 size prodigious, the candle seems to tell her; but there, as 

 it lies, vibrating its dingy pinions in unison with its dismal cry, 

 somewhat else seems to tell her that it is no moth at all, or a 

 moth of most strange unnatural behaviour, not at all to her 

 liking. Whether to rid herself by fair means, or by foul, of 

 her unwelcome guest, " that is the question." By alarming, 

 to drive away, she might bring the creature in her very face, or 

 on her very back ; better at once to " end it." So Deborah 

 screws up her courage, seizes on a knife, approaches with a 

 murderer's step her now quiescent victim, and with a dexterity^ 

 under existing circumstances, perfectly miraculous, severs its 

 head from its body. Then, as though a coffin had popped from 

 out the grate, bounds Deborah from the dresser with a piercing 

 scream. Most marvellous ! most horrible ! She hears again, 

 louder and more doleful than before, that melancholy cry, and 

 it is the moth's bodiless head, or headless body, from whence 

 it issues. She lifts the candle holds it nearer to the object, 

 the now twofold object of her terror she looks she listens 

 perhaps her ears, or eyes, or hand, had played her false ; but, 

 no ! they and her murderous weapon had all been true : here 

 lies the head, there the body, and, sure enough, too, the head 

 still wails as if in suffering, and the body heaves, and the dark 



