* * * * *

In a vast hollow, nearly surrounded by crags and precipices, bare and inaccessible, the meeting was assembled, and the lady of the Tower was to be restored to their communion.  Gliding like a shadow, came in the wife of Lord William,—­pale, and her tresses dishevelled, she seemed the victim either of disease or insanity.

Under a tottering and blasted pine sat their chief, in a human form; his stature lofty and commanding, he appeared as a ruler even in this narrow sphere of his dominion.  Yet he looked round with a glance of mockery and scorn.  He was fallen, and he felt degraded; but his aim was to mar the glorious image of his Maker, and trample it beneath his feet.

A crowd of miserable and deluded beings came at the beck of their chief, each accompanied by her familiar.  But the lady of Bernshaw came alone.  Her act of renouncement had deprived her of this privilege.

The mandate having been proclaimed, and the preliminary rites to this fearful act of reprobation performed, the assembly waited for the concluding act—­the cruel and appalling trial:  one touch of his finger was to pass upon her brow,—­the impress, the mark of the beast,—­the sign that was to snatch her from the reach of mercy!  Her spirit shuddered;—­nature shrank from the unholy contact.  Once more she looked towards that heaven she was about to forfeit,—­and for ever!

“For ever!”—­the words rang in her ears; their sound was like the knell of her everlasting hope.  She started aside, as though she felt a horrid and scorching breath upon her cheek, as though she already felt their unutterable import in the abysses of woe!

Conscience, long slumbering, seemed to awake; she was seized with the anguish of despair!  It seemed as though judgment were passed, and she was doomed to wander like some rayless orb in the blackness of darkness for ever.  One fearful undefined form of terror was before her; one consciousness of offence ever present; all idea of past and future absorbed in one ever-during NOW, she felt that her misery was too heavy to sustain.  A groan escaped her lips, but it was an appeal to that power for deliverance, who is not slow to hear, “nor impotent to save.”  Suddenly she was roused from some deep and overpowering hallucination; the promises of unlimited gratification to every wish prevailed no more, the tempter’s charm was broken.  All was changed; the whole scene seemed to vanish; and that form, which once appeared to her like an angel of light, fell prostrate, writhing away in terrific and tortuous folds on the hissing earth.  The crowd scattered with a fearful yell;—­she heard a rush of wings, and a loud and dissonant scream,—­and the “Bride of Bernshaw” fell senseless to the ground.

We leave the conscience-stricken victim whilst we relate the result of Robin’s watch-night at the mill.