tary
of hope deferred.

Was there a poetical justice in this, that the little _menage_ thus
secretly established, in the solitary and timeworn pile, should have
themselves experienced, but from causes not so easily explicable, those
very supernatural perturbations which they had themselves essayed to
inspire?

The interruption of the old priest's secret visits was the earliest
consequence of the mysterious interference which now began to display
itself. One night, having left his cob in care of his old sacristan in
the little village, he trudged on foot along the winding pathway, among
the gray rocks and ferns that threaded the glen, intending a ghostly
visit to the fair recluses of the castle, and he lost his way in this
strange fashion.

There was moonlight, indeed, but it was little more than quarter-moon,
and a long train of funereal clouds were sailing slowly across the
sky--so that, faint and wan as it was, the light seldom shone full out,
and was often hidden for a minute or two altogether. When he reached the
point in the glen where the castle-stairs were wont to be, he could see
nothing of them, and above, no trace of the castle-towers. So, puzzled
somewhat, he pursued his way up the ravine, wondering how his walk had
become so unusually protracted and fatiguing.

At last, sure enough, he saw the castle as plain as could be, and a
lonely streak of candle-light issuing from the tower, just as usual,
when his visit was expected. But he could not find the stair; and had to
clamber among the rocks and copse-wood the best way he could. But when
he emerged at top, there was nothing but the bare heath. Then the clouds
stole over the moon again, and he moved along with hesitation and
difficulty, and once more he saw the outline of the castle against the
sky, quite sharp and clear. But this time it proved to be a great
battlemented mass of cloud on the horizon. In a few minutes more he was
quite close, all of a sudden, to the great front, rising gray and dim in
the feeble light, and not till he could have struck it with his good oak
"wattle" did he discover it to be only one of those wild, gray frontages
of living rock that rise here and there in picturesque tiers along the
slopes of those solitary mountains. And so, till dawn, pursuing this
mirage of the castle, through pools and among ravines, he wore out a
night of miserable misadventure and fatigue.

Another night, riding up the glen, so far as the level way a