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 "No," replied she, "as I was passing through the hall I heard something that sounded like an attempt to raise the knocker, but there was no one to be seen."

"Perhaps it was the wind."

"It must be a very trickish wind to set the dog barking, raise knockers and make you see apparitions, Rosa."

"I hope nobody is cast away in such a storm as this, I am sure."

"You are so absorbed in your book you fancy yourself on Crusoe's desolate island I really believe, talking as if any body could be cast away on land. Read on: I suppose when you get through you will favor us with some of your sage reflections, won't you Rosa? for you look amazingly puzzled sometimes, as if you had got into a quandary and didn't know how to get out."

"Well, I have read it through at last, and there is a striking resemblance between it and Pilgrim's Progress," said Rosalind, after a few moments of silence, as she pushed from her an elegantly bound volume of Robinson Crusoe, with such force as to startle from her slumbers the old gray cat who had been permitted to take her evening nap upon the table.

"Is that all," said Walter, holding up his hands with a comical gesture, "I thought some very important announcement was coming from the flourish you made, something that might possibly affect the moon's setting or the sun's rising."

"More likely dispel some of the clouds that darken the intellects of men."