e stream doth linger,
In the hope that night
Will her lover bring her.

The tender trembling of a guitar was heard in accompaniment of the
ravishing melodist.

The song ceased.

"Where is the bird?" asked Turpin.

"Move on in silence, and you shall see," said Luke; and keeping upon the
turf, so that his horse's tread became inaudible, he presently arrived
at a spot where, through the boughs, the object of his investigation
could plainly be distinguished, though he himself was concealed from
view.

Upon a platform of rock, rising to the height of the trees, nearly
perpendicularly from the river's bed, appeared the figure of the gipsy
maid. Her footstep rested on the extreme edge of the abrupt cliff, at
whose base the water boiled in a deep whirlpool, and the bounding
chamois could not have been more lightly poised. One small hand rested
upon her guitar, the other pressed her brow. Braided hair, of the
jettiest dye and sleekest texture, was twined around her brow in endless
twisted folds:

Rowled it was in many a curious fret,
Much like a rich and curious coronet,
Upon whose arches twenty Cupids lay,
And were as tied, or loth to fly away.[24]

And so exuberant was this rarest feminine ornament, that, after
encompassing her brow, it was passed behind, and hung down in long thick
plaits almost to her feet. Sparkling, as the sunbeams that played upon
her dark yet radiant features, were the large, black, Oriental eyes of
the maiden, and shaded with lashes long and silken. Hers was a Moorish
countenance, in which the magnificence of the eyes eclipses the face, be
it ever so beautiful--an effect to be observed in the angelic pictures
of Murillo,--and the lovely contour is scarcely noticed in the gaze
which those long, languid, luminous orbs attract. Sybil's features were
exquisite, yet you looked only at her eyes--they were the loadstars of
her countenance. Her costume was singular, and partook, like herself, of
other climes. Like the Andalusian dame, her choice of color inclined
towards black, as the material of most of her dress was of that sombre
hue. A bodice of embroidered velvet restrained her delicate bosom's
swell; a rich girdle, from which depended a silver chain, sustaining a
short poniard, bound her waist; around her slender throat was twined a
costly kerchief; and the rest of her dress was calculated to display her
slight, yet faultless, figure to the fullest advantag