t she could hear the beating of her own heart, as she
stepped, mirror in hand, into the cold water, waded hastily, as far as
she dare, and then stopped aghast.

A ring of flame was round her waist; every limb was bathed in lambent
light; all the multitudinous life of the autumn sea, stirred by her
approach, had flashed suddenly into glory;--

"And around her the lamps of the sea nymphs, Myriad fiery globes, swam
heaving and panting, and rainbows, Crimson and azure and emerald, were
broken in star-showers, lighting Far through the wine-dark depths of the
crystal, the gardens of Nereus, Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms
and the palms of the ocean."

She could see every shell which crawled on the white sand at her feet,
every rock-fish which played in and out of the crannies, and stared at
her with its broad bright eyes; while the great palmate oarweeds which
waved along the chasm, half-seen in the glimmering water, seemed to
beckon her down with long brown hands to a grave amid their chilly
bowers. She turned to flee; but she had gone too far now to retreat;
hastily dipping her head three times, she hurried out to the sea-marge,
and looking through her dripping locks at the magic mirror, pronounced
the incantation--

"A maiden pure, here I stand,
Neither on sea, nor yet on land;
Angels watch me on either hand.
If you be landsman, come down the strand;
If you be sailor, come up the sand;
If you be angel, come from the sky,
Look in my glass, and pass me by;
Look in my glass, and go from the shore;
Leave me, but love me for evermore."

The incantation was hardly finished, her eyes were straining into the
mirror, where, as may be supposed, nothing appeared but the sparkle of
the drops from her own tresses, when she heard rattling down the pebbles
the hasty feet of men and horses.

She darted into a cavern of the high rock, and hastily dressed herself:
the steps held on right to the boat. Peeping out, half-dead with terror,
she saw there four men, two of whom had just leaped from their horses,
and turning them adrift, began to help the other two in running the boat
down.

Whereon, out of the stern sheets, arose, like an angry ghost, the portly
figure of Lucy Passmore, and shrieked in shrillest treble--

"Eh! ye villains, ye roogs, what do ye want staling poor folks' boats by
night like this?"

The whole party recoiled in terror, and one turned to run up the