prayers backwards; and last night--oh! last night! at the dead
hour, there came in a procession--of that I would take my oath--seven
black cats, each holding a torch with a blue flame, and danced around
me, till one laid his paw upon my breast, and grew and grew, with its
flaming eyes fixed on me, till it was as big as an ox, and the weight
was intolerable, the while her spells were over me, and I could not
open my lips to say so much as an Ave Mary. At last, the cold dew
broke out on my brow, and I should have been dead in another instant,
when I contrived to make the sign of the Cross, whereat they all
whirled wildly round, and I fell--oh! I fell miles and miles downwards,
till at last I found myself, at morning's light, with the hateful old
witch casting water in my face. Oh, Eustace, take me away!"

Such were the times, that Eustace Lynwood, with all his cool sense and
mental cultivation, believed implicitly poor Leonard's delirious
fancy--black cats and all; and the glances he cast at the poor old
Spaniard were scarcely less full of terror and abhorrence, as he
promised Leonard, whom he now regarded only in the light of his old
comrade, that he should, without loss of time, be conveyed to his own
tent.

"But go not--leave me not," implored Leonard, clinging fast to him,
almost like a child to its nurse, with a hand which was now cold as
marble.

"No; I will remain," said Eustace; "and you, Ingram, hasten to bring
four of the men with the litter in which Master d'Aubricour came from
Burgos. Hasten I tell you."

Ingram, with his eyes dilated with horror, appeared but too anxious to
quit this den, yet lingered. "I leave you not here, Sir Knight."

"Thanks, thanks, John," replied the youth; "but remain I must, and
will. As a Christian man, I defy the foul fiend and all his followers!"

John departed. Never was Leonard so inclined to rejoice in his
friend's clerkly education, or in his knighthood, which was then so
much regarded as a holy thing, that the presence of one whose entrance
into the order was so recent was deemed a protection. The old woman, a
kind-hearted creature in the main, though, certainly forbidding-looking
in her poverty and ugliness, was rejoiced to see her patient visited by
a friend. She came towards them, addressing Eustace with what he took
for a spell, though, had he understood Spanish he would have found it a
fine flowing compliment. Leonard shrank closer to him, pressed his
hand