adow on his bright, beautiful face,
not one sad echo in the rich, deep tones of his melodious voice to
betray such dim forebodings had found resting in his soul.

Already excited by his conversation with Agnes, the service in which he
found himself engaged was not such as to tranquillize his spirit, or
still his full heart's quivering throb. His imaginative soul had already
flung its halo over the solemn rites which attended his inauguration as
a knight. Even to less enthusiastic spirits there was a glow, a glory in
this ceremony which seldom failed to awake the soul, and inspire it with
high and noble sentiments. It was not therefore strange that these
emotions should in the heart of Nigel Bruce obtain that ascendency,
which to sensitive minds must become pain. Had it been a night of calm
and holy stillness, he would in all probability have felt its soothing
effect; but as it was, every pulse throbbed and every nerve was strained
'neath his strong sense of the sublime. He could not be said to think,
although he had struggled long and fiercely to compose his mind for
those devotional exercises he deemed most fitted for the hour. Feeling
alone possessed him, overwhelming, indefinable; he deemed it admiration,
awe, adoration of Him at whose nod the mighty thunders rolled and the
destructive lightnings flashed, but he could not define it such. He did
not dream of earth, not even the form of Agnes flashed, as was its wont,
before him; no, it was of scenes and sounds undreamed of in earth's
philosophy he thought; and as he gazed on the impenetrable darkness, and
then beheld it dispersed by the repeated lightning, his excited fancy
almost believed that he should see it peopled by the spirits of the
mighty dead which slept within those walls, and no particle of terror
attended this belief. In the weak superstition of his age, Nigel Bruce
had never shared, but firmly and steadfastly he believed, even in his
calm and unexcited moments, that there was a link between the living and
the dead; that the freed spirits of the one were permitted to hold
commune with the other, not in visible shape, but in those thrilling
whispers which the spirit knows, while yet it would deny them even to
itself. It was the very age of superstition; religion itself was clothed
in a veil of solemn mystery, which to minds constituted as Nigel's gave
it a deeper, more impressive tone. Its ceremonies, its shrines, its
fictions, all gave fresh zest to the im