of yon bright heaven. My hopes are yet there, whatever be thy doom! If thou art aught within the pale of mercy I am thine, but not in blood."

   Again, but on another page, she wrote the word "

    Thine

   ." Again the blood-drop effaced the letters.

   "Never, though I love thee! Why urge this compact?" With a trembling hand she retraced her pledge, and the omen

   was not repeated. She had dared much; but her hope of mercy was yet dearer than her heart's deep and overwhelming passion. With joy she saw the writing was unchanged.

   Throwing on her hood and kerchief, she stole forth to the brook, and in the rivulet, where it was yet dark and unfrozen, she threw the mystic tablet.

   The following night she watched the moon, as it rose above the huge crags, breaking the long undulating horizon of Blackstone Edge, called "Robin Hood's Bed," or "Robin Hood's Chair."

     [5]

   One jagged peak, projected upon the moon's limb, looked like some huge spectre issuing from her bright pavilion. She rose, red and angry, from her dark couch. Afterwards a thin haze partially obscured her brightness; her pale, wan beam seemed struggling through a wide and attenuated veil. The wind, too, began to impart that peculiar chill so well understood as the forerunner of a change. A loud sough came shuddering through the frozen bushes, moaning in the grass that rustled by her path. Muffled and alone, she took her adventurous journey to the mill, where she arrived in about an hour from her departure. Ralph was anxiously expecting her, together with his dame.

   "Good e'en, lady," said the latter, with great alacrity, as Eleanor crossed the threshold. She returned the salutation; but her features were lighted up with a wild and deceptive brightness, and her glowing eye betrayed the fierce and raging conflict within.

   "The shadow will soon point to the hour, and we must be gone," said the impatient miller.

   "Lead on," replied the courageous maiden; and he shrank from her gaze, conscious of his own treachery and her danger.

   The hard and ice-bound waters were dissolving, and might be heard to gurgle 

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