ed to
call assistance. The huntsman approached them accordingly, and the Lord
Keeper saw he was a stranger, but was too much agitated to make any
farther remarks. In a few hurried words he directed the shooter, as
stronger and more active than himself, to carry the young lady to a
neighbouring fountain, while he went back to Alice's hut to procure more
aid.

The man to whose timely interference they had been so much indebted did
not seem inclined to leave his good work half finished. He raised Lucy
from the ground in his arms, and conveying her through the glades of
the forest by paths with which he seemed well acquainted, stopped not
until he laid her in safety by the side of a plentiful and pellucid
fountain, which had been once covered in, screened and decorated with
architectural ornaments of a Gothic character. But now the vault which
had covered it being broken down and riven, and the Gothic font ruined
and demolished, the stream burst forth from the recess of the earth in
open day, and winded its way among the broken sculpture and moss-grown
stones which lay in confusion around its source.

Tradition, always busy, at least in Scotland, to grace with a legendary
tale a spot in itself interesting, had ascribed a cause of peculiar
veneration to this fountain. A beautiful young lady met one of the Lords
of Ravenswood while hunting near this spot, and, like a second Egeria,
had captivated the affections of the feudal Numa. They met frequently
afterwards, and always at sunset, the charms of the nymph's mind
completing the conquest which her beauty had begun, and the mystery of
the intrigue adding zest to both. She always appeared and disappeared
close by the fountain, with which, therefore, her lover judged she had
some inexplicable connexion. She placed certain restrictions on their
intercourse, which also savoured of mystery. They met only once a
week--Friday was the appointed day--and she explained to the Lord of
Ravenswood that they were under the necessity of separating so soon as
the bell of a chapel, belonging to a hermitage in the adjoining wood,
now long ruinous, should toll the hour of vespers. In the course of his
confession, the Baron of Ravenswood entrusted the hermit with the
secret of this singular amour, and Father Zachary drew the necessary and
obvious consequence that his patron was enveloped in the toils of Satan,
and in danger of destruction, both to body and soul. He urged these
perils to the Bar