e same
liveliness, the dancers danced as merrily as ever, and the spectators
applauded each display of agility.

"Well, then," spake the Abbot, bursting with rage, "an ye cease not,
be my curse on your head--there may ye dance for a year and a day!"

He banned them bitterly; with uplifted hands and eyes he imprecated
the vengeance of Heaven on their disobedience. He prayed to the Lord
to punish them for the slight of his directions. Then he sought his
cell to vent his ire in solitude.

From that hour they continued to dance until a year and a day had
fully expired. Night fell, and they ceased not; day dawned, and they
danced still. In the heat of noon, in the cool of the evening, day
after day there was no rest for them, their saltation was without end.
The seasons rolled over them. Summer gave place to autumn, winter
succeeded summer, and spring decked the fields with early flowers, as
winter slowly disappeared, yet still they danced on, through coursing
time and changing seasons, with unabated strength and unimpaired
energy. Rain nor hail, snow nor storm, sunshine nor shade, seemed to
affect them. Round and round and round they danced, in heat and cold,
in damp and dry, in light and darkness. What were the seasons--what
the times or the hour or the weather to them? In vain did their
neighbours and friends try to arrest them in their wild evolutions; in
vain were attempts made to stop them in their whirling career; in vain
did even the Abbot himself interpose to relieve them from the curse he
had laid on them, and to put a period to the punishment of which he
had been the cause. The strongest man in the vicinity held out his
hand and caught one of them, with the intention of arresting his
rotation, and tearing him from the charmed circle, but his arm was
torn from him in the attempt, and clung to the dancer with the grip of
life till his day was done. The man paid his life as the forfeit of
his temerity. No effort was left untried to relieve the dancers, but
every one failed. The sufferers themselves, however, appeared quite
unconscious of what was passing. They seemed to be in a state of
perfect somnambulism, and to be altogether unaware of the presence of
any persons, as well as insensible to pain or fatigue. When the
expiration of their punishment arrived, they were all found huddled
together in the deep cavity which their increasing gyrations had worn
in the earth beneath them. It was a considerable time before