I had not done laughing, and he was nearly catching the infection. He observed in the words of his favourite poet, that, my lungs did crow like chanticleer, and I did laugh sans intermission.
He took up the letter again, and read a great portion to himself, or half aloud. I caught the following passage:
"Do you remember, Charles, when, in the early days of our courtship, you used nightly to serenade me under my window in the enchanted castle, and how long it was before you knew that I, like yourself, had an earthly body that had an existence of its own? And when I told you that my parents—or rather, my adopted parents—were not in the land of spirits, but that they inhabited the same world in which, in the daytime, we ourselves were forced to vegetate; and when you thereupon asked me with whom I shared the castle, do you remember the horror, the rage, and indignation you felt when you heard that I was held captive within that enchanted castle by a horrible wizard, who tortured me and tried all his base arts to make me yield to his love? Oh! Charles, I often look back to that time. I can see the bold outline of that rude, massive building on a rock frowning on the lake below. I feel myself yet at my casement, gazing out in search of your bark, which passed nightly close to my window, and I fancy I hear your touch upon the lute reverberating through the night air.
"With what horror I remember being torn from my window on that night by my captor, as I was waving my handkerchief to you on the lake. Oh! the torture I underwent within those unhallowed walls after you left me; the scenes I was compelled to witness, the oaths I was forced to hear; and then the infernal hideousness of the countenance of my demon captor!
"Oh! Charles, shall I ever forget the night on which you rode up to the wizard's castle on a spirit charger, habited as a cavalier, and bearing a ladder of ropes under your mantle which you reached up to me on the point of your lance; how I descended, and you placed me behind you on your steed and galloped away; how, ere we were far from the castle, my flight was discovered, and the wizard and all his demon host mounted their demon chargers and started in pursuit of us; how they gained on us; how we avoided them for miles by hardly half-a-horse's length, until we arrived at a bridge across a river of fire, over which none but the pure in love can pass? Dost remember, Charles, how bravely thy spirit charger bore us over in safety, and how, when the fell magician endeavoured to follow us with his evil crew, how the bridge tumbled to atoms, and the demon host was swallowed up in the fiery waves? Then how, when our charger was spent, we turned him out to graze, the sun having risen; and how, having arrived at the sea shore, we found a boat, which we entered, and steered onward in search of further adventure. How swiftly, how gallantly we sailed, as if borne on by the good spirits, until we reached an island, where the inhabitants welcomed us and claimed us as their king and queen. Charles! do you remember all this? But why call up all these reminiscences? They are over now, and passed as a dream, and this hence-forward must be our life. I know nothing of your life in the flesh, my spirit lover, or what may be your social position in this world. No matter, whatever it be, and in spite of whatever obstacles may raise themselves to our happiness in this vale of tears, remember that I am ever thine in the spirit,
"Edith L——."
Having concluded, he folded up the letter, kissed it, and pressed it to his heart.
"And do you remember all the details of that strange adventure alluded to by Miss Edith, as having happened to you both? Do you remember really having taken part in this strange romance in another phase of existence?" I asked.
"Certainly I do," he replied; "every particular of it."
"Strange!" I muttered, to myself. "Then these dreams, as we ordinary mortals would say, are really to such beings as yourself facts—phases of another existence," I remarked.