The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart; and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden, until he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the park, through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he came to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of which, just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy woodland.
Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of his happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie. Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly onward through the dim wild-wood path toward the Devil's Drinking Cup. He came in sight of it--a woman sat by its brink, who started to her feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.
It was Melanie--alone--and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping bitterly.
She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed, half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognize his face, and, perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approach of a stranger.
Gradually, however, she seemed in part to recognize him. The look of inquiry and alarm gave place to a fixed, glaring, icy stare of unmixed dread and horror; and when he had now come to within six or eight paces of her, still without speaking, she cried, in a wild, low voice,
"Great God! great God! has he come up from the grave to reproach me! I am true, Raoul; true to the last, my beloved!"
And with a long, shivering, low shriek, she staggered, and would have fallen to the earth had he not caught her in his arms.
But she had fainted in the excess of superstitious awe, and perceived not that it was no phantom's hand, but a most stalwort arm of human mould that clasped her to the heart of the living Raoul de St. Renan.
Upon yon hillock in this valley's midst, Where the low crimson sun lies sweetly now On corn-fields--clustered trees--and meadows wide Scattered with rustic homesteads, once there stood A blockhouse, with its loop-holes, pointed roof, Wide jutting stories, and high base of stone. A hamlet of rough log-built cabins stood Beside it; here a band of settlers dwelt. One of the number, a gray stalwort man, Still lingers on the crumbling shores of Time. Old age has made him garrulous, and oft I've listened to his talk of other days In which his youth bore part. His eye would then Flash lightning, and his trembling hand would clench His staff, as if it were a rifle grasped In readiness for the foe.