"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldsthave of me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarryhere."
As the old withered woman spoke, a smile glimmered on hercountenance, like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The ladytrembled, and cast her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, asif meditating to return with her purpose unaccomplished. But itwas not so ordained.
"I am a stranger in this land, as you know," said she at length."Whence I come it matters not; but I have left those behind mewith whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cutoff forever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot awaywith, and I have come hither to inquire of their welfare."
"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee newsfrom the ends of the earth?" cried the old woman, peering intothe lady's face. "Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings;yet, be thou bold, and the daylight shall not pass away fromyonder hill-top before thy wish be granted."
"I will do your bidding though I die," replied the ladydesperately.
The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree,threw aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks, and beckonedher companion to draw near.
"Kneel down," she said, "and lay your forehead on my knees."
She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long beenkindling burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down, theborder of her garment was dipped into the pool; she laid herforehead on the old woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloakabout the lady's face, so that she was in darkness. Then sheheard the muttered words of prayer, in the midst of which shestarted, and would have arisen.
"Let me flee,--let me flee and hide myself, that they may notlook upon me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, shehushed herself, and was still as death.
For it seemed as if other voices--familiar in infancy, andunforgotten through many wanderings, and in all the vicissitudesof her heart and fortune--were mingling with the accents of theprayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct, notrendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of abook which we strive to read by an imperfect and graduallybrightening light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, didthose voices strengthen upon the ear; till at length the petitionended, and the conversation of an aged man, and of a woman brokenand decayed like himself, became distinctly audible to the ladyas she knelt. But those strangers appeared not to stand in thehollow depth between the three hills. Their voices wereencompassed and reechoed by the walls of a chamber, the windowsof which were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibration of aclock, the crackling of a fire, and the tinkling of the embers asthey fell among the ashes, rendered the scene almost as vivid asif painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two oldpeople, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous andtearful, and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of adaughter, a wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor alongwith her, and leaving shame and affliction to bring their grayheads to the grave. They alluded also to other and more recentwoe, but in the midst of their talk their voices seemed to meltinto the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the autumnleaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneelingin the hollow between three hills.
"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it,"remarked the old woman, smiling in the lady's face.
"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense ofintolerable humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
"Yea; and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman."Wherefore, cover thy face quickly."
Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of aprayer that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven; and soon,in the pauses of her breath, strange murmurings began to thicken,gradually increasing so as to drown and overpower the charm bywhich they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound,and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which,in their turn, gave way to a wild roar of laughter, brokensuddenly by groanings and sobs, forming altogether a ghastlyconfusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chains were rattling,fierce and stern voices uttered threats, and the scourgeresounded at their command. All these noises deepened and becamesubstantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguishevery soft and dreamy accent of the love songs that diedcauselessly into funeral hymns. She shuddered at the unprovokedwrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling of flames andshe grew faint at the fearful merriment raging miserably aroundher. In the midst of this wild scene, where unbound passionsjostled each other in a drunken career, there was one solemnvoice of a man, and a manly and melodious voice it might oncehave been. He went to and fro continually, and his feet soundedupon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company, whoseown burning thoughts had become their exclusive world, he soughtan auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpretedtheir laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spokeof woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, ofa home and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout,the laugh, the shriek the sob, rose up in unison, till theychanged into the hollow, fitful, and uneven sound of the wind, asit fought among the pine-trees on those three lonely hills. Thelady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in herface.
"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in amadhouse?" inquired the latter.
"True, true," said the lady to herself; "there is mirth withinits walls, but misery, misery without."
"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.
"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," repliedthe lady, faintly.
"Then, lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou maystget thee hence before the hour be past."
The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, butdeep shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre nightwere rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil womanbegan to weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, tillthe knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of her words,like a clang that had travelled far over valley and risingground, and was just ready to die in the air. The lady shook uponher companion's knees as she heard that boding sound. Stronger itgrew and sadder, and deepened into the tone of a death bell,knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower, and bearingtidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall, and tothe solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom appointedin turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly,slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailingon the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of theirmelancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the burialservice, while the leaves of his book were rustling in thebreeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud,still there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct,from women and from men, breathed against the daughter who hadwrung the aged hearts of her parents,--the wife who had betrayedthe trusting fondness of her husband,--the mother who had sinnedagainst natural affection, and left her child to die. Thesweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapor,and the wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffinpall, moaned sadly round the verge of the Hollow between threeHills. But when the old woman stirred the kneeling lady, shelifted not her head.
"Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" said the withered crone,chuckling to herself.
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