returned with a barn-door fowl
in his hand, a well-fed chanticleer, whose crow that morning had
awakened his cackling dames for the last time.

With great solemnity the conjuror went forth from the chamber, and in
the courtyard the fowl was named "John;" sponsors standing in due
form, as at an ordinary baptism. Then the bird was dismembered, or
rather divided into four parts, according to the directions they had
received. These were afterwards disposed of as follows:--one was
buried at Little Clegg, in a field close by, another under one of the
hearth-flags in the hall, another at the Beil Bridge, by the river
which runs past Belfield, and the remaining quarter under the
barn-floor. Nicholas continued to look on with a curious eye until the
ceremony was concluded, when, after a brief pause, he inquired--

"Have there been no tidings yet from Alice? Can thine art not disclose
to me whither she be gone?"

"The maiden lives," said the beggar doggedly.

"Thou knowest of her hiding, then?" said her brother sharply, and with
a cunning glance directed towards the speaker.

"The spirit said so," replied Noman, as though wishful to evade or to
shrink from the question.

"And what else?" inquired the other; "for by my halidome thou stirrest
not hence until she be forthcoming, alive or dead! I verily
suspect--nay, more, I charge thee with forcibly detaining her against
her own privity or consent."

The beggar looked steadily upon him, not a whit either moved or
abashed at this bold accusation.

"Peradventure thou speakest without heed and unadvisedly. I tell thee
again, thou wouldest have been driven hence ere now had it not been
for others whom that spirit must obey."

"Who art thou?" said the perplexed inquirer; "for thou art either
worse or better than thou seemest."

"Once the rightful heir, now a beggar, in these domains, wrested from
me by rapine and the harpy fangs of injustice misnamed law. Theophilus
Ashton, from whom ye took your share of the inheritance when death
dislodged it from his gripe, won it himself most foully from my
ancestors;--and have I not a right to hate thee?"

"And so thy vengeance hath fallen upon a defenceless woman?"

"Nay, I said not so; but if I had so minded I might have been glutted
with vengeance, ay, to my heart's core. Hark thee. Secrets I have
learned that will bind the hidden things of darkness, and bow them to
my behest. The unseen powers and operations of nature have been o