hand of the King, followed; and the company
laughed, wept, and wondered, as the actors performed their parts before
them.

But now came the royal dance; the music burst into a bolder strain, and
lord and lady rose, treading the strange measure down the hall, after the
King and his fair Queen. Louder, and yet more loud the music pealed; and,
though it was midnight, the multitude without shouted at its enlivening
strains. Blithely the dance went on, and the King well nigh forgot the
measure as he looked enraptured in the fair face of his beauteous bride.

He turned to take her hand in the dance, and in its stead the bony fingers
of a skeleton were extended to him. He shrank back aghast; for royalty
shuddereth at the sight of Death as doth a beggar, and, in its presence,
feeleth his power to be as the power of him who vainly commanded the waves
of the sea to go back. Still the skeleton kept true measure before
him--still it extended to him its bony hand. He fell back, in horror,
against a pillar where a torch-bearer stood. The lovely Queen shrieked
aloud, and fell as dead upon the ground. The music ceased--silence fell on
the multitude--they stood still--they gazed on each other. Dismay caused
the cold damp of terror to burst from every brow, and timid maidens sought
refuge and hid their faces on the bosom of strangers. But still, visible to
all, the spectre stood before the king, its bare ribs rattling as it moved,
and its finger pointed towards him. The music, the dancers, became
noiseless, as if Death had whispered--"_Hush_!--_be still_!" For the figure
of death stood in the midst of them, as though it mocked them, and no sound
was heard save the rattling of the bones, the moving of its teeth, and the
motion of its fingers before the king.

The lord abbot gathered courage, he raised his crucifix from his breast, he
was about to exorcise the strange spectre, when it bent its grim head
before him, and vanished as it came--no man knew whither.

"Let the revels cease!" gasped the terror-stricken king; and they did
cease. The day had begun in joy, it was ended in terror. Fear spread over
the land, and while the strange tale of the marriage spectre was yet in the
mouths of all men, yea before six months had passed, the tidings spread
that the good King Alexander, at whom the figure of Death had pointed its
finger, was with the dead, and his young queen a widow in a strange land.

The appearance of the spectre became a tale