Hidden Witchery

ion. A blinking moon threw darts of light across the marshy plain to reveal the mist-filled hollows of the uplands, but scurring cloud flew in tangles across the beaming disc, and forbade his impatient gaze. Down in the keep his lady-mother sat pricking upon her broidery-frame; yet the scallop shell grew slowly on the pilgrim's bonnet, and the silken weft ravelled thickly in the red Venetian cloth. Ever and anon she glanced at the fair face of Lady Elaine, who sat at her feet reading aloud the story of Paladin Roland and his knights fightingagainst the Saracens. And, as the history related of valorous fighting, the high-spirited maid?living in the strife?retold the tale with heightened colour and ennobled voice, her blue eyes aglow with excitement. The hoarse winds grew high ; great gouts of rain poured against the shuttered boles; storm- fiends screeched in the darkness without: but peace within that chamber was exceeding great. In the upper hall the fir faggots blazed and crackled with long-tongued flames, sending a furnace blast up the capacious chimney ; massive carvings of stone threw grotesque shapes upon the arras as the torches flickered in the draughts; and strange shadows wavered in unlit corners as the fires waxed and waned. The knight crossed the reeds with feverish haste. Standing beneath a guttering flambeau he re-read her loving message : " Issola longeth for thee." Like one overcome by ripened wine he swayed with lavish passion, then bendin...