at dare sit on St. Swithin's Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.

The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,
These three long years in battle and siege;
News are there none of his weal or his woe,
And fain the Lady his fate would know.

She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks;--
Is it the moody owl that shrieks?
Or is it that sound, betwixt laughter and scream,
The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream?

The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
And the roaring torrent ceased to flow;
The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
Then the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form!

. . . . . .

'I am sorry to disappoint the company, especially Captain Waverley, who
listens with such laudable gravity; it is but a fragment, although I
think there are other verses, describing the return of the Baron from
the wars, and how the lady was found "clay-cold upon the grounsill
ledge."'

'It is one of those figments,' observed Mr. Bradwardine, 'with which
the early history of distinguished families was deformed in the times
of superstition; as that of Rome, and other ancient nations, had their
prodigies, sir, the which you may read in ancient histories, or in the
little work compiled by Julius Obsequens, and inscribed by the learned
Scheffer, the editor, to his patron, Benedictus Skytte, Baron of
Dudershoff.'

'My father has a strange defiance of the marvellous, Captain Waverley,'
observed Rose, 'and once stood firm when a whole synod of Presbyterian
divines were put to the rout by a sudden apparition of the foul fiend.'

Waverley looked as if desirous to hear more.

Must I tell my story as well as sing my song?--Well.--Once upon a time
there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to
be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly,
very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a
fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon
her for the sin of witchcraft. And she was imprisoned for a week in the
steeple of the parish church, and sparingly supplied with food, and not
permitted to sleep, until she herself became as much persuaded of her
being a witch as her accusers; and in this lucid and happy state of
mind was brought forth to make a clean brea