g letters, like runes, in the air.

Then slowly she turned, and looked forth through the dull window. "Give
me my coverchief and my staff," said she quickly.

Every one of the handmaids, blithe for excuse to quit a task which seemed
recently commenced, and was certainly not endeared to them by the
knowledge of its purpose communicated to them by the lady, rose to obey.

Unheeding the hands that vied with each other, Hilda took the hood, and
drew it partially over her brow. Leaning lightly on a long staff, the
head of which formed a raven, carved from some wood stained black, she
passed into the hall, and thence through the desecrated tablinum, into
the mighty court formed by the shattered peristyle; there she stopped,
mused a moment, and called on Edith. The girl was soon by her side.

"Come with me.--There is a face you shall see but twice in life;--this
day,"--and Hilda paused, and the rigid and almost colossal beauty of her
countenance softened.

"And when again, my grandmother?"

"Child, put thy warm hand in mine. So! the vision darkens from me.--when
again, saidst thou, Edith?--alas, I know not."

While thus speaking, Hilda passed slowly by the Roman fountain and the
heathen fane, and ascended the little hillock. There on the opposite
side of the summit, backed by the Druid crommel and the Teuton altar, she
seated herself deliberately on the sward.

A few daisies, primroses, and cowslips, grew around; these Edith began to
pluck. Singing, as she wove, a simple song, that, not more by the
dialect than the sentiment, betrayed its origin in the ballad of the
Norse [11], which had, in its more careless composition, a character
quite distinct from the artificial poetry of the Saxons. The song may be
thus imperfectly rendered:

"Merrily the throstle sings
Amid the merry May;
The throstle signs but to my ear;
My heart is far away!

Blithely bloometh mead and bank;
And blithely buds the tree;
And hark!--they bring the Summer home;
It has no home with me!

They have outlawed him--my Summer!
An outlaw far away!
The birds may sing, the flowers may bloom,
O, give me back my May!"

As she came to the last line, her soft low voice seemed to awaken a
chorus of sprightly horns and trumpets, and certain other wind
instruments peculiar to the music of that day. The hillock bordered the
high road to London--which then wound through wastes o