ABSTRACT
It was day-break when we returned to the parsonage. Isabella was exhausted by fatigue, terror, and anxiety; and the events of the night past had so strongly exercised my feelings, that on reaching my chamber, and throwing myself on my bed, I sunk into a deep sleep which lasted several hours. As soon as I awoke, I started from my pillow, scarcely satisfied in my own mind whether the conflagration had really taken place, or that a dream had deceived my senses, and presented horrors which in fact had never existed. The melancholy conviction soon met my eyes; for, on approaching the casement of my chamber, the first objects I beheld were the shattered walls of the manor-house, inclosing a furnace still smoking with the remnant of its interior adornments. I stood for several minutes contemplating the scene of desolation, which being the first of the kind that I had ever witnessed, excited sensations of the most gloomy and awful description.
