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faithful-too, too faithful-his perfidy would have bereft me of my senses; but the fatal consequences of his fidelity have done me a tenfold injury.»

She paused, and then resumed with the wild tone of insanity, « It has made me the powerful and the despairing Sovereign of the Seas and Winds."

She paused a second time after this wild exclamation, and resumed her narrative in a more composed manner.

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My lover came in secret to Hoy, to concert measures for my flight, and I agreed to meet him, that we might fix the time when his vessel should come into the Sound. I left the house at midnight.»

Here she appeared to gasp with agony, and went on with her tale by broken and interrupted sentences. « I left the house at midnight I had to pass my father's door, and I perceived it was open-I thought he watched us, and that the sound of my steps might not break his slumbers, I closed the fatal door-a light and trivial action-but, God in Heaven! what were the consequences!-At morn, the room was full of suffocating vapour-my father was dead-dead through my act-dead through my disobedience-dead through my infamy! All that follows is mist and dark ness--but choking, suffocating, stifling mist envelops all that I said and did, all that was

said and done, until I became assured that my doom was accomplished, and walked forth the calm and terrible being you now behold me— the Queen of the Elements-the sharer in the power of those beings to whom man and his passions give such sport as the tortures of the dog-fish afford the fisherman, when he pierces his eyes with thorns, and turns him once more into his native element, to traverse the waves in blindness and agony. No, maidens, she whom you see before you is impassive to the follies of which your minds are the sport. I am she that have made the offering-I am she that bereaved the giver of the gift of life which he gave me the dark saying has been interpreted by my deed, and I am taken from humanity, to be something pre-eminently powerful, pre-eminently wretched.» As she spoke thus, the light, which had been long quivering, leaped high for an instant, and seemed about to expire, when Norna, interrupting herself, said hastily, « No more now-he comes--he comes -Enough that ye know me, and the right I have to advise and command you.-Approach now, proud Spirit! if thou wilt. >>

So saying, she extinguished the lamp, and passed out of the apartment with her usual loftiness of step, as Minna could observe from its measured cadence.

CHAPTER VII.

Is all the counsel that we two have shared-
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us-O, and is all forgot?

Midsummer Night's Dream.

THE attention of Minna was powerfully arrested by this tale of terror, which accorded with and explained many broken hints respecting Norna, which she had heard from her father, and other near relations; and she was for a time so lost in surprise, not unmingled with horror, that she did not even attempt to speak to her sister Brenda. When, at length, she called her by her name, she received no answer, and, on touching her hand, she found it cold as ice. Alarmed to the uttermost, she threw open the lattice and the window-shutters, and admitted at once the free air and the pale glimmer of the hyperborean summer night. She then became sensible that her sister was in a swoon. All thoughts concerning Norna, her frightful tale, and her mysterious con

nexion with the invisible world, at once vanished from Minna's thoughts, and she hastily ran to the apartment of the old housekeeper, to summon her aid, without reflecting for a moment what sights she might encounter in the long dark passages which she had to traverse.

The old woman hastened to Brenda's assistance, and instantly applied such remedies as her experience suggested; but the poor girl's nervous system had been so much agitated by the horrible tale she had just heard, that, when recovered from her swoon, her utmost endeavours to compose her mind could not prevent her falling into a hysterical fit of some duration. This also was subdued by the experience of old Euphane Fea, who was well versed in all the simple pharmacy used by the natives of Zetland, and who, after administering a composing draught, distilled from simples and wild flowers, at length saw her patient resigned to sleep. Minna stretched herself beside her sister, kissed her cheek, and courted slumber in her turn; but the more she invoked it, the farther it seemed to fly from her eyelids; and if at times she was disposed to sink into repose, the voice of the involuntary parricide seemed again to sound in her ears, and startled her into consciousness.

The early morning hour at which they were accustomed to arise found the state of the sisters different from what might have been

VOL. II.

6

expected. A sound sleep had restored the spirit of Brenda's lightsome eye, and the rose on her laughing cheek; the transient indisposition of the preceding night having left as little trouble on her look, as the fantastic terrors of Norna's tale had been able to impress on her imagination. The looks of Minna, on the contrary, were melancholy, downcast, and apparently exhausted by watching and anxiety. They said at first little to each other, as if afraid of touching a subject so fraught with emotion as the scene of the preceding night. It was not until they had performed together their devotions, as usual, that Brenda, while lacing her sister's boddice, for they rendered the services of the toilet to each other reciprocally, became sensible of the paleness of her sister's looks; and having ascertained, by a glance at the mirror, that her own did not wear the same dejection, she kissed Minna's cheek, and said affectionately, «Claud Halcro was right, my dearest sister, when his poetica! folly gave us these names of Night and Day.» « And wherefore should you say so now?» said Minna.

Because we each are bravest in the season that we take our name from: I was frightened well nigh to death, by hearing those things last night, which endured with courageous firmness; and now, when it is broad light, I can think of them with composure, while you

you

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