unappropriated carrion, if you go not. Ha' pity on your poor knave, and deliver me from my tormentors!"
"Then to-morrow I will deliver thee," said the maiden, "and break thine enchantment. But the hour?"
"Ere the moonbeam touches the pillar in the Fairies' Hall."
"Agreed, knave. So begone. Yet—and answer truly for thy life—was no pledge, no token, sent with this message?"
Ralph unwillingly drew forth the token from his belt. Fearful that it might divulge more than he wished, the treacherous messenger had kept back the tablets entrusted to him. He suspected that should she be aware it was the good people who were a-wanting her, he would have but a slender chance of success.
She glanced hastily, anxiously, over the page, though with great surprise.
"How now?" said she, thoughtfully. "Here is a pretty love-billet truly. The page is fair and unspotted—fit emblem of a lover's thoughts."
"You are to write thereon, lady, your lover's wish, and throw it into the brook here, hard by. The stream, a trusty messenger will carry it back to its owner."
Ralph delivered his message with great reluctance, fearful lest she might be alarmed and retract her promise.
To his great joy, however, she placed the mystic token in her bosom, and bade him attend on the morrow.
This he promised faithfully; and with a light heart he returned to his abode.
Eleanor watched his departure with impatience. She took the tablets from her bosom. Horror seemed to fold his icy fingers round her heart. She remembered the injunction. Her mind misgave her, and as she drew towards the lamp it shot forth a tremulous blaze and expired. Yet with desperate haste, bent, it might seem, on her own destruction, she hastily approached the window. The moonbeam shone full upon the page as she scrawled with great trepidation the word "
Thine
." To her unspeakable horror the letters became a track of fire, but as she gazed a drop of dark blood fell on them and obliterated the writing.
"Must the compact be in blood?" said she, evidently shrinking from this unhallowed pledge. "Nay then, farewell! Thou art not
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