Part 7

They crept onwards until they saw the dark rocks in the Fairies' Chapel. The miller pointed to a long withered bough that flung out its giant arms far over the gulph from a great height. The moon threw down the shadow quite across to the bank on the other side, marking its rude outline on the crags.

"The signal," said Ralph; "and by your favour, lady, I must depart. I have redeemed my pledge."

"Stay, I prithee, but within hearing," said Eleanor. "I like not the aspect of this place. If I call, hasten instantly to my succour."

The miller promised, but with a secret determination not to risk his carcase again for all the bright-eyed dames in Christendom.

She listened to his departing footsteps, and her heart seemed to lose its support. An indescribable feeling crept upon her--a consciousness that another was present in this solitude. She was evidently under the control of some invisible agent; the very freedom of her thoughts oppressed and overruled by a power superior to her own. She strove to escape this thraldom, but in vain. She threw round an apprehensive glance, but all was still--the dripping boughs alone breaking the almost insupportable silence that surrounded her. Suddenly she heard a sigh, and a rustling at her ear; and she felt an icy chillness breathing on her. Then a voice, musical but sad, whispered--

"Thou hast rejected my suit. Another holds thy pledge."

"Another! Who art thou?" said the maiden, forgetting her fears in the first emotion of surprise.

"Thou hast been conscious of my presence in thy dreams!" replied the mysterious visitor. She felt her terrors dissipated, for the being whom she loved was the guardian of her safety.

"I have loved thee, maiden," said the voice; "I have hovered round thee when thou slept, and thou hast answered my every thought. Wherefore hast thou not obeyed? Why not seal thy compact and our happiness together?"

"Because it was unhallowed," replied she firmly, though her bosom trembled like the leaf fluttering from its stem.

"Another has taken thy pledge. Yet is it not too late. Renew the contract, even with thy blood, and I am thine! Refuse, and thou art his. If this hour pass, I am lost to thee for ever!"

"To whom," inquired Eleanor, "has it been conveyed?"

"To thy first, thy betrothed lover. He found the pledge that I would not receive."

The maiden hesitated. Her eternal hopes might be compromised by this compliance. But she dreaded the loss of her insidious destroyer.

"Who art thou? I fear me for the tempter!"

"And what boots it, lady? But, listen. These elves be my slaves; and yet I am not immortal. My term is nigh run out, though it may be renewed if, before the last hour be past, a maiden plight her hopes, her happiness to me! Ere that shadow creeps on the fairy pillar thou art irrevocably mine, or his whom thou dreadest."

Eleanor groaned aloud. She felt a cold hand creeping on her brow. She screamed involuntarily. On a sudden the boughs bent with a loud crash above her head, and a form, rushing down the height, stood before her. This unexpected deliverer was Oliver Chadwyck. Alarmed by the cries of a female, as he was returning from the chase, he interposed at the very moment when his mistress was ensnared by the wiles of her seducer.

"Rash fool, thou hast earned thy doom. The blood be on thine own head. Thou art the sacrifice!"

This was said in a voice of terrible and fiendish malignity. A loud tramp, as of a mighty host, was heard passing away, and Oliver now beheld the form of his betrothed.

"Eleanor! Here! In this unholy place!" cried her lover. But the maiden was unable to answer.

"There's blood upon my hand!" said he, holding it up in the now clear and unclouded moonlight. "Art thou wounded, lady?"

"I know not," she replied; "I was alone. Yet I felt as though some living thing were nigh--some unseen form, of terrible and appalling attributes! Was it not a dream?"

"Nay," said Oliver, pensively; "methought another was beside thee!"

"I saw him not."

"How camest thou hither?"

"Let us be gone," said she, trembling; "I will tell thee all."

She laid her head on his shoulder. It throbbed heavily. "I am now free. The accursed links are broken. I feel as though newly wakened from some horrible dream! Thou hast saved me, Oliver. But if thine own life is the price!"

"Fear not; I defy their devilish subtilty--in their very den too: and thus, and thus, I renounce the devil and all his works!"