lightning."

"Avaunt, fiend!" cried Henry. "I will hold no converse with thee. Back
to thy native hell!"

"You have no power over me, Harry," rejoined the demon, his words
mingling with the rolling of the thunder, "for your thoughts are evil,
and you are about to do an accursed deed. You cannot dismiss me. Before
the commission of every great crime--and many great crimes you will
commit--I will always appear to you. And my last appearance shall he
three days before your end--ha! ha!"

"Darest thou say this to me!" cried Henry furiously.

"I laugh at thy menaces," rejoined Herne, amid another peal of
thunder--"but I have not yet done. Harry of England! your career shall
be stained in blood. Your wrath shall descend upon the heads of those
who love you, and your love shall be fatal. Better Anne Boleyn fled
this castle, and sought shelter in the lowliest hovel in the land, than
become your spouse. For you will slay her--and not her alone. Another
shall fall by your hand; and so, if you had your own will, would all!"

"What meanest thou by all?" demanded the king.

"You will learn in due season," laughed the fiend. "But now mark me,
Harry of England, thou fierce and bloody kin--thou shalt be drunken with
the blood of thy wives; and thy end shall be a fearful one. Thou shalt
linger out a living death--a mass of breathing corruption shalt thou
become--and when dead the very hounds with which thou huntedst me shall
lick thy blood!"

These awful words, involving a fearful prophecy, which was afterwards,
as will be shown, strangely fulfilled, were so mixed up with the rolling
of the thunder that Henry could scarcely distinguish one sound from the
other. At the close of the latter speech a flash of lightning of such
dazzling brilliancy shot down past him, that he remained for some
moments almost blinded; and when he recovered his powers of vision the
demon had vanished.

III.

How Mabel Lyndwood was taken to the Castle by Nicholas
Clamp--And how they encountered Morgan Fenwolf by the way.

THE storm which had fallen so heavily on the castle had likewise visited
the lake, and alarmed the inmates of the little dwelling on its banks.
Both the forester and his grand-daughter were roused from their beds,
and they sat together in the chief apartment of the cottage, listening
to the awful rolling of the thunder, and watching the blue flashing of
the lightning. The storm was of unusually long duration, and c