arms startled the night,
and once more the leaves fell fluttering on his head, and the beldam
angrily exclaimed: "Come in, old fool," and laid hands on him a
second time, as, in a voice thick and hurried with dislike and
terror, he replied: "You are remembered by me, woman; give me
shelter for a moment," and hastily stepping with her over the
threshhold, she closed the door after them. Another burst of
triumphant laughter rose from the retiring revellers, and again
moonlight and returning silence rested on the scene.

CHAPTER VII.

"It is my lady: oh, it is my love!"

_Romeo and Juliet._

The agitation of the morning at Stillyside had subsided as the day
wore, but the mind of Amanda Macdonald (for such was the name of
the younger and fairer denizen of that sequestered abode) remained
pensive and preoccupied; and when at her usual hour she had ascended
to her chamber, instead of retiring to rest, she took up a tale of
the troubadours, and read; nor did she lay down the volume till
the sudden flickering of the candle in the socket and the simultaneous
tolling from the distant belfry of the church of the village of
Saint Laurent warned her that it was midnight. Then, feeling
oppressed, alike with the heaviness of the atmosphere of her room,
and a strange weight at her heart, analogous to the lassitude that
is sometimes felt in the beginning of sickness, she arose, drew
aside the curtains, and throwing open the folding window, stepped
on to the verandah. A clear Canadian night, appearing a new and
chaster version of the day, greeted her. The moon, at night's
meridian, hung high in the fulness of its autumnal splendor, tranquil
in the solitude of the sky, a solitude unbroken, save by a few
small stars that were twinkling in the azure, and a fleet of low,
dappled clouds that were coasting the horizon. Awhile her eyes
dwelt abstractedly on the sight, then, falling, they wandered
listlessly over the broad and shining expanse of landscape before
her; where Nature, unrobed, seemed as in a bath; for in front, the
grass, steeped in descending dews, glittered as a lake. Woods
confined the view in one direction, and the gleamy wave of the
Ottawa, amidst filmy obscurity, bounded it, yet further off, in
another. Unseen but felt, like the unperceived Genius of the
landscape, towered close behind her the sombre-sided mountain; and,
touched by the solemn scene, she advanced, and, leaning upon the
balustrade, heaved a de