RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



63 



them, he perceived a female walking on the north side of this 

 com-t ; but when or how she entered, his eyes could not inform 

 him. Presently, three other figures, such as Ozias had described, 

 followed her slowly, one by one, till they disappeared. Walter 

 was a brave and sagacious man, but he lived in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century. He was affected by the dimness and solitude 

 of the hour, by the soundless and solemn tread of these figures, 

 and especially by the resemblance of the female one to a person 

 long since dead. Yet he remembered that earthly forms might 

 have found a passage through the north side of the court to a 

 terrace which bordered it. He made haste through that passage, 

 and saw these strange spectres gliding down a descent almost be- 

 yond human tread, among elms that have grown for ages on the 

 shelves of the steep, towards the river that washes their roots. 

 Lambert grew dizzy as he looked into the tremendous chasm, and 

 asked himself if he only dreamed. The crash of one of these 

 old elms' branches, convinced him that more than shadows were 

 endeavouring to descend ; and a sudden thought taught him an- 

 other mode of acting. The narrow river which found its way, al- 

 most invisibly, under the steep terrace, had a communication with 

 a canal lately dug, and any boat which attempted to pass might 

 be stopped at the first lock. Walter ran with the speed of an 

 alarmed father by another road to the banks of the canal, consid- 

 reing himself certain that the group he had seen, if they were 

 fugitives, would be compelled to pass that way. He waited at 

 the first lock till his impatience grew to agony ; he walked on the 

 narrow pathway, among rocks and weeds, till he reached the hol- 

 low under the castle-terrace where he had seen them descending. 

 ISTot a trace of boat or passengers could be found. Not a branch 

 had been broken from the magnificent elms that almost overtop 

 the castle, nor was there the print of a single footstep on the de- 

 clivity of the moist b'ank. The dead leaves lay thick and undis- 

 turbed, and some lilies which grew at the water's edge hung in 

 clusters too full and extensive to have permitted swimmers or a 

 boat. He returned to the castle-court in extreme agitation. He 

 placed a ladder ascainst the window of his daughter's bed-cham- 

 ber, where a watch-light always burned ; and looking in, perceived 

 both his children asleep in their respective beds. This spectacle 

 completed his confusion, though it calmed his worst fears, and he 

 went to his own room almost converted to superstition. 



