e brook here, hard by. The stream, a trusty messenger will carry it
back to its owner."

Ralph delivered his message with great reluctance, fearful lest she
might be alarmed and retract her promise.

To his great joy, however, she placed the mystic token in her bosom,
and bade him attend on the morrow.

This he promised faithfully; and with a light heart he returned to his
abode.

Eleanor watched his departure with impatience. She took the tablets
from her bosom. Horror seemed to fold his icy fingers round her heart.
She remembered the injunction. Her mind misgave her, and as she drew
towards the lamp it shot forth a tremulous blaze and expired. Yet with
desperate haste, bent, it might seem, on her own destruction, she
hastily approached the window. The moonbeam shone full upon the page
as she scrawled with great trepidation the word "THINE." To her
unspeakable horror the letters became a track of fire, but as she
gazed a drop of dark blood fell on them and obliterated the writing.

"Must the compact be in blood?" said she, evidently shrinking from
this unhallowed pledge. "Nay then, farewell! Thou art not of yon
bright heaven. My hopes are yet there, whatever be thy doom! If thou
art aught within the pale of mercy I am thine, but not in blood."

Again, but on another page, she wrote the word "THINE." Again the
blood-drop effaced the letters.

"Never, though I love thee! Why urge this compact?" With a trembling
hand she retraced her pledge, and the omen was not repeated. She had
dared much; but her hope of mercy was yet dearer than her heart's deep
and overwhelming passion. With joy she saw the writing was unchanged.

Throwing on her hood and kerchief, she stole forth to the brook, and
in the rivulet, where it was yet dark and unfrozen, she threw the
mystic tablet.

The following night she watched the moon, as it rose above the huge
crags, breaking the long undulating horizon of Blackstone Edge, called
"Robin Hood's Bed," or "Robin Hood's Chair."[5]

One jagged peak, projected upon the moon's limb, looked like some huge
spectre issuing from her bright pavilion. She rose, red and angry,
from her dark couch. Afterwards a thin haze partially obscured her
brightness; her pale, wan beam seemed struggling through a wide and
attenuated veil. The wind, too, began to impart that peculiar chill so
well understood as the forerunner of a change. A loud sough came
shuddering through the frozen bushes, moaning in the grass