monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted,
their heart failing them: for a sudden fear, and not looked for, came
upon them.

"So then whosoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a
prison without iron bars.

"For whether he were husbandman, or shepherd, or a labourer in the
field, he was overtaken, and endured that necessity, which could not be
avoided: for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.

"Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among
the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently,

"Or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not
be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild
beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these things
made them to swoon for fear.

"For the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in
their labour:

"Over them only was spread an heavy night, an image of that darkness
which should afterward receive them: but yet were they unto themselves
more grievous than the darkness."

He had read so much, and stopped to think a little; for through the
incongruity of it, which he did not doubt arose from poverty of
imagination in the translator, rendering him unable to see what the
poet meant, ran yet an indubitable vein of awful truth, whether fully
intended by the writer or not mattered little to such a reader as
Donal--when, lifting his eyes, he saw lady Arctura standing before him
with a strange listening look. A spell seemed upon her; her face was
white, her lips white and a little parted.

Attracted, as she was about to pass him, by the sound of what was none
the less like the Bible from the solemn crooning way in which Donal
read it to the congregation of his listening thoughts, yet was
certainly not the Bible, she was presently fascinated by the vague
terror of what she heard, and stood absorbed: without much originative
power, she had an imagination prompt and delicate and strong in
response.

Donal had but a glance of her; his eyes returned again at once to his
book, and he sat silent and motionless, though not seeing a word. For
one instant she stood still; then he heard the soft sound of her dress
as, with noiseless foot, she stole back, and took another way.

I must give my reader a shadow of her. She was rather tall, slender,
and fair. But her hair was dark, and so crinkly that, when merely
parted, it did all the rest itself. He