fellow-collegian, which I put into my pocket meaning to read them to
you both. They are not verses like yours, which evidently burst from you
spontaneously, and are not imitated from any other poets. These verses
were written by a Scotchman, and smack of imitation from the old ballad
style. There is little to admire in the words themselves, but there
is something in the idea which struck me as original, and impressed me
sufficiently to keep a copy, and somehow or other it got into the leaves
of one of the two books I carried with me from home."

"What are those books? Books of poetry both, I will venture to wager--"

"Wrong! Both metaphysical, and dry as a bone. Tom, light your pipe, and
you, sir, lean more at ease on your elbow; I should warn you that the
ballad is long. Patience!"

"Attention!" said the minstrel.

"Fire!" added Tom.

Kenelm began to read,--and he read well.

LORD RONALD'S BRIDE.

PART I.

"WHY gathers the crowd in the market-place
Ere the stars have yet left the sky?"
"For a holiday show and an act of grace,--
At the sunrise a witch shall die."

"What deed has she done to deserve that doom?
Has she blighted the standing corn,
Or rifled for philters a dead man's tomb,
Or rid mothers of babes new-born?"

"Her pact with the fiend was not thus revealed,
She taught sinners the Word to hear;
The hungry she fed, and the sick she healed,
And was held as a Saint last year.

"But a holy man, who at Rome had been,
Had discovered, by book and bell,
That the marvels she wrought were through arts unclean,
And the lies of the Prince of Hell.

"And our Mother the Church, for the dame was rich,
And her husband was Lord of Clyde,
Would fain have been mild to this saint-like witch
If her sins she had not denied.

"But hush, and come nearer to see the sight,
Sheriff, halberds, and torchmen,--look!
That's the witch standing mute in her garb of white,
By the priest with his bell and book."

So the witch was consumed on the sacred pyre,
And the priest grew in power and pride,
And the witch left a son to succeed his sire
In the halls and the lands of Clyde.

And the infant waxed comely and strong and brave,
But his manhood had scarce begun,
When his vessel was launched on the northern wave
To the shores which are near the sun.

PART II.

Lord Ronald has come to his halls in Clyde
With a bride of