favourable interpretation of all that seemed sinister and doubtful. But
according to the tenets of that peculiar form of magic cultivated by
Hilda, the comprehension became obscured by whatever partook of human
sympathy. It was a magic wholly distinct from the malignant witchcraft
more popularly known to us, and which was equally common to the Germanic
and Scandinavian heathens.

The magic of Hilda was rather akin to the old Cimbrian Alirones, or
sacred prophetesses; and, as with them, it demanded the priestess--that
is, the person without human ties or emotions, a spirit clear as a
mirror, upon which the great images of destiny might be cast untroubled.

However the natural gifts and native character of Hilda might be
perverted by the visionary and delusive studies habitual to her, there
was in her very infirmities a grandeur, not without its pathos. In this
position which she had assumed between the earth and the heaven, she
stood so solitary and in such chilling air,--all the doubts that beset
her lonely and daring soul came in such gigantic forms of terror and
menace!--On the verge of the mighty Heathenesse sinking fast into the
night of ages, she towered amidst the shades, a shade herself; and round
her gathered the last demons of the Dire Belief, defying the march of
their luminous foe, and concentering round their mortal priestess, the
wrecks of their horrent empire over a world redeemed.

All the night that succeeded her last brief conference with Harold, the
Vala wandered through the wild forest land, seeking haunts or employed in
collecting herbs, hallowed to her dubious yet solemn lore; and the last
stars were receding into the cold grey skies, when, returning homeward,
she beheld within the circle of the Druid temple a motionless object,
stretched on the ground near the Teuton's grave; she approached, and
perceived what seemed a corpse, it was so still and stiff in its repose,
and the face upturned to the stars was so haggard and death-like;--a face
horrible to behold; the evidence of extreme age was written on the
shrivelled livid skin and the deep furrows, but the expression retained
that intense malignity which belongs to a power of life that extreme age
rarely knows. The garb, which was that of a remote fashion, was foul and
ragged, and neither by the garb, nor by the face, was it easy to guess
what was the sex of this seeming corpse. But by a strange and peculiar
odour that rose from the form [179