charnel-house than aught
instinct with the common attributes of humanity.

Buckley was for a moment daunted. The form was so unlike anything he
had ever seen. He was almost persuaded of the possibility that it
might be some animated corpse doomed to wander forth either for
punishment or expiation. Her lips still moved. A wild glassy eye was
fixed upon them, and as she yet stood with extended arms, Gervase,
almost wrought to desperation, cried out--

"Who art thou? Thy business here?"

A hollow sound, hardly like the tones of a human voice, answered in a
slow and solemn adjuration--

"Beware, rash fools! None approach the Red Woman but to their
undoing."

"I know no hindrance to my free course in this domain. By whose
authority am I forbidden?" said he, taking courage.

"Away--mine errand is not to thee unless provoked."

"Unto whom is thy message?"

"To thy leman--thy ladye-love, whom thou wilt cherish to thine hurt.
Leave her, ay, though both hearts break in the separation."

"I will not."

"Then be partaker of the wrath that is just ready to burst upon her
doomed house."

"I told thee," said Grace, "she is the herald of misfortune! What woe
does she denounce? What cruel judgment hast thou invoked upon our
race?" cried she to this grim messenger of evil.

"Evil will--evil must! I will cling to ye till your last sustenance be
dried up, and your inheritance be taken from ye."

"Her fate be mine," said Buckley, indignantly. "Her good or evil
fortune I will share."

"Be it so. Thou hast made thy choice, and henceforth thou canst not
complain."

She stretched out her two hands, one towards Clegg Hall, the abode of
the maiden, and the other towards Buckley, her lover's paternal roof,
from which a blue curl of smoke was just visible over the rising
grounds beneath them.

"A doom and a curse to each," she muttered. "Your names shall depart,
and your lands to the alien and the stranger. Your honours shall be
trodden in the dust, and your hearths laid waste, and your habitations
forsaken."

In this fearful strain she continued until Buckley cried out--

"Cease thy mumbling, witch. I'll have thee dealt with in such wise thy
tongue shall find another use."

Turning upon him a look of scorn, she seemed to grow fiercer in her
maledictions.

"Proud minion," she cried, "thou shall die childless and a beggar!"

The cunning raven flapped his great heavy wings and seemed to croak an
assent. He then hopped o