She shed no tear until the holy man, with awful and solemn denunciations, exorcised the unclean spirit to whom she was bound.  He admonished her, as a repentant wanderer from the flock, to shun the perils of presumption, reminding her that HE, of whom it is written that He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,—­HE who won for us the victory in that conflict, taught us in praying to say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  She was rebaptized as one newly born, and committed again to the keeping of the Holy Church.  Shortly afterwards were united at the altar Lord William and Lady Sibyl.  He accompanied her to Bernshaw Tower, their future residence,—­becoming, in right of his wife, the sole possessor of those domains.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[41] In Lancashire these noises are called the Gabriel Ratchets, according to Webster, which seem to be the same with the German Rachtvogel or Rachtraven.  The word and the superstition are still prevalent.  Gabriel Ratchets are supposed to be like the sound of puppies yelping in the air, and to forebode death or misfortune.

PART THIRD.

Twelve months were nigh come and gone, and the feast of All-Hallows was again at hand.  Lord William’s bride sat in her lonely bower, but her face was pale, and her eyes red with weeping.  The tempter had been there; and she had not sought for protection against his snares.  That night she was expected to renew her allegiance to the prince of darkness.  Those fearful rites must now bind her for ever to his will.  Such appeared to be her infatuation that it led her to imagine she was yet his by right of purchase, without being fully conscious of the impiety of that thought.  His own power had been promised to her:  true, she must die; but might she not, a spirit like himself, rove from world to world without restraint?  She thought—­so perilously rapid was her relapse and her delusion—­that his form had again passed before her, beautiful as before his transgression!—­“The Son of the Morning!” arrayed in the majesty which he had before the world was,—­ere heaven’s Ruler had hurled him from his throne.  Her mental vision was perverted.  Light and darkness, good and evil, were no longer distinguished.  Perhaps it was a dream; but the imagination had becomed diseased, and she distinguished not its inward operations from outward impressions on the sense.  Her husband was kind, and loved her with a lover’s fondness, but she could not return his affection.  He saw her unhappy, and he administered comfort; but the source of her misery was in himself, and she sighed to be free?

“Free!”—­she started; the voice was an echo to her thought.  It appeared to be in the chamber, but she saw no living form.  She had vowed to renounce the devil and all his works in her rebaptism, before she was led to the altar, and how could she face her husband?