The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. JUDGES, chap. v., verse 20.
The princes of the night mounted their flaming steeds and coursed through heaven. Lillian sat in widow’s weeds, and watched them from her great round tower. Suddenly the clang of a mailed heel rung on the winding stair, and her cheek paled—for those halls no longer echoed with martial sounds since Lord Ulric had been gathered home. Near and more near, loud and more loud, and a warrior strode into the apartment, and folded the lady in his embrace!
Those old, familiar, long beloved tones, how they broke upon the loneliness, thrilling to its centre her sorrow-stricken heart. What marvel if she wept unresistingly on his broad breast, in her agony of surprise.
Then was the spell broken, and her soul awoke to a sense of its stern resolves. She freed herself from that passionate embrace, saying,
“But listen to my pleadings, my long lost one; canst thou not divinely forgive the past, and be my guardian angel for the future? Hast thou ceased to love, or hast thou learned to fear me?”
“Kenneth, thou art accursed of God, and abhorred of men, and yet I fear thee not. Thou wert the lover of my youth, ever fond, ever tender; and thy name, so dreaded in the land thou hast scourged, is to me but a talisman of gentle memories. I fear thee not. But I have walked through life with a strong hand on my heart, curbing its warm impulses, crushing its fond love. It hath plead passionately for thee, but I hearkened not, and by this bitter schooling have I learned to resist even _thee_.”
“And I, have I not, ’mid sin and sorrow, ’mid wreck of hopes and ruin of soul, preserved undimmed my one bright dream of thee? Have I not sat by a lonely hearth, while thy smile filled the home of my rival with joy? Have I not forborne to tear thee thence, because I would not offer violence to thee or thine? And now wilt thou reject the love which youth hath sanctified, and manhood ripened?”
“Oh, why hast thou not wedded and forgotten me?” she cried, in anguish.
“Because the hope of thy pale waning beauty was dearer to my heart than all the daughters of bloom. Because I would be ever ready for the hour when fate should say, ‘arise, make ready thy bower for thy promised bride;’ _that hour has come_! Mark the heavens where ’tis written, thou art mine. Once, long ago, we looked upon the night with all its circling stars; thou seest them now, as then, treading their solemn round, unchanged, unchangeable. Not one of all the starry hosts may wander from its appointed pathway; and canst thou, child of destiny, escape thy fate? The hand that guides _them_, governs _thee_, and the decrees of the Omnipotent have been, from all eternity, and are immutable.”