THE MONASTERY & Its Sequel, The Abbot (Illustrated Edition). Walter Scott

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       Noon gleams on the lake—

       Noon glows on the fell—

       Wake thee, O wake,

       White Maid of Avenel!"

      His eye was on the holly bush as he spoke the last line; and it was not without an involuntary shuddering that he saw the air betwixt his eye and that object become more dim, and condense, as it were, into the faint appearance of a form, through which, however, so thin and transparent was the first appearance of the phantom, he could discern the outline of the bush, as through a veil of fine crape. But, gradually, it darkened into a more substantial appearance, and the White Lady stood before him with displeasure on her brow. She spoke, and her speech was still song, or rather measured chant; but, as if now more familiar, it flowed occasionally in modulated blank-verse, and at other times in the lyrical measure which she had used at their former meeting.

      "This is the day when the fairy kind

       Sits weeping alone for their hopeless lot,

       And the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind,

       And the mer-maiden weeps in her crystal grot:

       For this is the day that a deed was wrought,

       In which we have neither part nor share.

       For the children of clay was salvation bought,

       But not for the forms of sea or air!

       And ever the mortal is most forlorn.

       Who meeteth our race on the Friday morn."

      "Spirit," said Halbert Glendinning, boldly, "it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as thy words infer, of a race more peculiarly the care of Heaven than thine, it is mine to call, it must be thine to answer. I am the nobler being."

      As he spoke, the figure looked upon him with a fierce and ireful countenance, which, without losing the similitude of that which it usually exhibited, had a wilder and more exaggerated cast of features. The eyes seemed to contract and become more fiery, and slight convulsions passed over the face, as if it was about to be transformed into something hideous. The whole appearance resembled those faces which the imagination summons up when it is disturbed by laudanum, but which do not remain under the visionary's command, and, beautiful in their first appearance, become wild and grotesque ere we can arrest them.

      But when Halbert had concluded his bold speech, the White Lady stood before him with the same pale, fixed, and melancholy aspect, which she usually bore. He had expected the agitation which she exhibited would conclude in some frightful metamorphosis. Folding her arms on her bosom, the phantom replied,—

      "Daring youth! for thee it is well,

       Here calling me in haunted dell,

       That thy heart has not quail'd,

       Nor thy courage fail'd,

       And that thou couldst brook

       The angry look

       Of Her of Avenel.