crowned lady; then, the door being closed, and the light of the inner apartment hidden, Phantasmion was left alone with the trees and the half shrouded moon. "That voice, that diadem, that gorgeous train!" exclaimed the youth; "full surely this is the passionate dame who sate discoursing with that strange woman of the deep. They spake of poisonous fish!--O, can this maiden, who looks too fair and good to dwell below the sky, can she be the base instrument of wicked wills? Nay, nay, she is herself beguiled, perchance to be the victim of treacherous hatred." He gazed on the dark tower, and had resolved to gain admittance by force or stratagem, when a file of armed men advanced through the trees into the lawn, talking loud and peering about, as if in search of some one. From a few words which came to his ear, Phantasmion guessed that he had been descried from the castle, and that the guard were come to lay hands on him. He glided off amid the trees, while the clouds were veiling the moon's light, and found his way, by the margin of the isle, to that same spot which he had visited in the morning; from the bank of pebbles he bounded to the first of the craggy islets, thence to the second, and from that again to the shore of the mainland.

The moon was driving off her veil when Phantasmion thus crossed the water; and, when he stood on the shore, having the woody knoll right before him, she had thrown it completely aside. The prince resolved on returning to the fisherman's hut by the side of the lake opposite to that which he that he should have gone whole sheet of water by the

had lately traversed, so completely round the time that he reached

the cottage, which from its situation he felt sure of recognizing.

nature.

He skirted the lake closely, being obliged now and then to leap over parts of the shore which it would have been troublesome to pass step by step, and in this way he came to a river, which he concluded was on its way to join the sea upon the right hand. The stream was wide where it issued out of the lake, and looked deep and turbid. Phantasmion prepared to spring across, but checked himself and paused for a few moments, surveying the opposite bank, and endeavouring to ascertain its While standing thus on the river's brim, he felt something cold and slimy touching his foot between the straps of the sandals, and soon a slippery hand glided up his leg where it was bare, the tight vest having been rent by thorns during his journey. Phantasmion had no time to consider what this might be, for the touch was as that of a torpedo, and he had received an electrical shock which benumbed his whole body. While he stood stupified and motionless, again he felt the terrible hand grasping his leg, and attempting to drag him into the river. Then, throwing down the serpent wand, he hastily drew his sword, and smote that which was pulling at his leg; whereupon a hissing sound, such as a snake might send forth when crushed by a stone, issued from the water, which was tinged for a moment with blood. Phantasmion looked down and beheld the flat white face of the fishy woman, Seshelma, glistening in the moonlight; she leaned backward in the tide as if she were faint with pain, and her great glassy eyes appeared fixed and rigid; but, when they stared on him that had inflicted the wound, they seemed to express more of slow

malice than of any keen sensation. Soon, however, she gathered strength, and turning about began to dive away into the deeper water. Phantasmion seized her blue locks, but they slipped out of his hand, while the air was filled with cries of menace or of mockery, and numberless grotesque visages, starting out of water, gleamed momently in the twilight. The prince staggered and fell, for he had received another severe shock; from which having at length recovered, he saw nothing but the image of the moon's face on the stream, and heard no sound but the soft full murmur of an unimpeded current, smoothly sweeping by.

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER PASSING THE NIGHT IN A THICKET, PHANTASMION TALKS WITH TELZA, THE NURSE OF IARINE.

FOR some time after he had grasped the locks of Seshelma, Phantasmion felt as if his limbs were frozen; and, on attempting once more to spring across the river, he found that his leaping powers were suspended. No boat was at hand or to be seen within hail; he dared not trust himself in the waters of that haunted stream, but, feeling desirous of rest, he resolved to make his bed for the remainder of the night in a grove of oaks and beeches, a little way removed from the borders of the lake and river. On arriving in this thicket he seemed to have entered a dim chamber, so close and leafy were the boughs that composed it; and the moss on which he reclined, beneath the boughs of an oak, made an easy couch; but no sooner had he laid down than he seemed to hear the hum of a spinning-wheel, turned by some one in the dark; and the importunate bird, which produced that sound from her gaping throat, kept flying round his head and striking her wings together sonorously. After persevering in this course for some time, she would perch on a bough just above the prince's head, and utter two or three short sharp notes, as though a thorn were piercing her bosom. It was in vain to scare the bird away, for she still returned, and at last, in spite

of her noise and restlessness, Phantasmion fell half asleep, and thus reposed till he was completely awakened by a still more impetuous clapping of pinions, and a vehement whistling close to his face. The youth arose, and, by a glimmer of the moon's light, which pierced the branchy covert, he descried a glistering snake, and the speckled night-jar, with her great bill wide open, pouring out her angry murmur over the silent reptile's head. He drew the sword from his girdle and cut the serpent in pieces; then, stooping down to examine its severed head, he espied a nest in a little hollow betwixt the roots of the oak tree, and thus discovered the cause of that poor bird's uneasiness. For she had first been driven from her nest by Phantasmion's approach, and was afterwards in trepidation at the appearance of the reptile. She imagined indeed that it came to suck her unprotected eggs, while the prince believed it to be some emissary of Seshelma, who seemed bent on procuring his death or driving him out of Rockland; and, when he had looked at the several pieces of the dead snake in a fuller light, and saw that it closely resembled that which prepared to attack him in the woody knoll, this opinion was strengthened.

The youth advanced a little further in the wood to climb a beech tree; and, when the night-jar was settled on her nest, he had stretched himself along one of its wide, flat boughs, the upper ones forming a canopy over his head. Here he slept till break of day, and was then roused by the twittering of birds all around him: when he first entered the grove it seemed to have no other inhabitants than the disturbed mother and himself; but now every tree was alive with chirping voices and mov