ing away as if nothing had happened to him—and after nodding a while to the gay measure, sprung fairly out of their coffins, and began to shake their rattling fleshless limbs in some sort of measure to the tune. The whole inhabitants of the churchyard soon appeared in motion, and even the grated windows of the vaults beneath the church were quickly filled with grinning skulls, which seemed to crowd upon each other till the bolts and bars were wrenched away by their skeleton hands, and the whole fearful assemblage burst out of their places of confinement and rushed towards the dance which was already begun around the piper. But what a scene now took place when the bleached anatomies began to tilt and caper about over the graves and among the tombstones, with an energy of action which perhaps they never possessed while in the body! Here a party whirled about in the light waltz, till the eyes of the watchmen grew blind in looking upon them,—there a couple of large-boned skeletons revelled apart from all the rest,—on one side a multitudinous assemblage of shroud-infolded forms stood gazing with apparent impatience on a dance which some of their number were performing,—on another sheetless skeletons, and forms whose limbs were yet infolded in their grave-clothes, old and young, tall and short, were blended together in one undistinguishable mass, beating time to the music with their arms and feet. At last the clock tolled twelve, and all hastened at the sound to their respective tombs. The piper also put his pipes under his arm, and slipt quietly into his grave in the corner of the churchyard.
The watchmen made their fearful report of the occurrences of the night to the mayor long before day-break; and the prudent magistrate, after extracting all the information he could obtain from them, enjoined the strictest secrecy upon them, and promised to keep watch with them the following night himself. But the news were far too wonderful to be kept locked up in the heart of any one who was aware of them; and accordingly, long before night-fall, the whole
