Mrs. Loudon

“A vision came in on the moon-beam.”

Henry, left on the beach, with his chest beside him, slept heavily for some hours. When he awoke it was night. He lay on the shingles. He felt the fresh breath of the breeze, as, from time to time, it lifted the hair on his fevered temples. He heard the dash of each billow as it struck the shore, and the rattle of the loose stones, as each wave retired again, down the extended sloping bank of smooth pebbles, on which his head was pillowed. Thinking it all a dream, he remained for some moments motionless; when, becoming more clearly awake, he sat up, and passed his hand across his eyes, as it were to rectify their vision.

The moon had risen over the expanse of waters before him. He gazed on the sparkling of her myriad beams, mingling in fairy dance o’er all the solitary waste, for not a sail or mast appeared. He looked on his right hand, and on his left; here too all was loneliness!

His ideas still bewildered, he rested his eyes on the pillar of light, which the bright orb exactly opposite to him, and still near the horizon, had flung across the whole ocean, planting its base at his very feet. On a sudden this dazzling object became obscured, and he beheld, standing over him, and intercepting its refulgence, the same remarkable figure which, it may be remembered, Mr. Jackson had seen walking with him, about eight years since, in the shrubbery at Lodore House.