The monastery; The abbot.

THE MONASTERY. 129
fountain, and as often towards the tree, and repeated the same rhyme as
formerly,"Thrice to the holy brake- Noon gleams on the lakeThrice to the well:-. Noon glows on the fellI bid thee awake, Wake thee, O wake,
White Maid of Avenel! White Maid, of Avenel!"
His eye was on the holly bush as he spoke the last line; and it was not
without an involuntary shuddering that he saw the air betwixt his eye and
that object become more dim, and condense, as it were, into the faint appearance of a form, through which, however, so thin and transparent was
the first appearance of the phantom, he could discern the outline of the
bush, as through a veil of fine crape. But, gradually, it darkened into a
more substantial appearance, and the White Lady stood before him with
displeasure on her brow. She spoke, and her speech was still song, or
rather measured chant; but, as if now more familiar, it flowed occasionally
in modulated blank-verse, and at other times in the lyrical measure which
she had used at their former meeting.
"This is the day when the fairy kind
Sits weeping alone for their hopeless lot,
And the wood-rnaiden sighs'to the sighing wind,
And the mer-maiden weeps in her crystal grot:
For this is the day that a deed was wrought,
In which we have neither part nor share,
For the children of clay was salvation bought,
But not for the forms of sea or air!
And ever the mortal is most forlorn,
Who meeteth our race on the Friday morn."
" Spirit,i said Halbert Glendinning, boldly, " it is bootless to threaten
one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I
think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors
which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is
hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as thy words
infer, of a race more peculiarly the care of Heaven than thine, it is mine to
call, it must be thine to answer. I am the nobler being."
As he spoke, the figure looked upon him with a fierce and ireful countenance, which, without losing the similitude of that which it usually exhibited, had a wilder and more exaggerated cast of features. The eyes
seemed to contract and become more fiery, and slight convulsions passed
over the face, as if it was about to be transformed into something hideous.
The whole appearance resembled those faces which the imagination summons up when it is disturbed by laudanum, but which do not remain under
the visionary's command, and, beautiful in their first appearance, become
wild and grotesque ere we can arrest them.
But when Ialbert had concluded his bold speech, the White Lady stood
before him with the same pale, fixed, and melancholy aspect, which she
usually bore. He had expected the agitation which she exhibited would
conclude in some frightful metamorphosis. Folding her arms on her
bosom, the phantom replied,"Daring youth! for thee it is well, Did one limb shiver,
Here calling me in haunted dell, Or an eyelid quiver,
That thy heart has not quail'd, Thou wert lost for ever.
Nor thy courage fail'd, Though I amn form'd from the ether blue,
And that thou couldst brook And my blood is of the unfallen dew,
The angry look And thou art framed of mud and dust,
Of Her of Avenel.'Tis thine to speak, reply I must."
"I demand of thee, then," said the youth, "by what charm it is that I
am thus altered in mind and in wishes - that I think no-longer of deer or
dog, of bow or bolt that my soul spurns the bounds of this obscure glen
-that my blood boils at an insult from one by whose stirrup I would some
days since have run for a whole summer's morn, contented and honoured
by the notice of a single word? Why do I now seek to mate me with
princes, and knights, and nobles? - Am I the same, who but yesterday, as
it were, slumbered in contented obscurity, but who am to-day awakened to
VOL,. V.-9