aughter. She hath seen me. Ay, to-night.
And how runs the prophecy? Let her beware. I have looked on her
beforetime. Looked on her! ay, until these glowing orbs have become dim,
dazzled with excess of brightness. I have looked on her till this stern
bosom hath become softer than the bubbling wax to her impression; but I
was concealed, and the maiden passed unharmed by the curse. To-night I
have saved her life. A resistless impulse! And she hath looked on me."
He smote his brow, groaning aloud in the agony he endured.

It may be supposed this revelation did not allay the apprehensions of
the listener. Bewildered and agitated, he turned towards the window. The
pale moon was glimmering through the quiet leaves, and he saw a dark and
muffled figure in the avenue. It was stationary for a while; it then
slowly moved towards the adjoining thicket and was lost to his view.
Holt turned to address his visitor, but he had disappeared. It was like
the passing of a troubled dream, vague and indistinct, but fraught with
horrible conceptions. A cloud seemed to gather on his spirit, teeming
with some terrible but unknown doom. Its nature even imagination failed
to conjecture. His first impulse was to visit his daughter. He found the
careful nurse by her bedside. As he entered the room, Agnes raised one
finger to her lips, in token of silence. The anxious father bent over
his child. Her sleep was heavy, and her countenance flushed. A tremor
passed over her features. A groan succeeded. Suddenly she started up.
With a look of anguish he could never forget, she cried--

"Help! O my father!" She clung around his neck. In vain he endeavoured
to soothe her. She sobbed aloud, as if her heart were breaking. But she
never told that dream, though her haggard looks, when morning rose on
her anxious and pallid countenance, showed the disturbance it had
created.

Days and weeks passed by. The intrusion of the bold outlaw was nigh
forgotten. The father's apprehensions had in some degree subsided, but
Constance did not resume her wonted serenity. Her earliest recollections
were those of the old nursery rhymes, with which Agnes had not failed to
store her memory. But the giant killers and their champions now failed
to interest and excite. Other feelings than those of terror and of
wonder were in operation, requiring a fresh class of stimulants for
their support--tales of chivalry and of love, that all-enduring passion,
where maidens and their lovers