shall have more than gained my purpose. Will my children listen?” “What is there we can refuse you, noble grandam?” said the lovely Jean, burying her locks of amber amid the snowy curls of the venerable Countess. “Speak on, then; you have made us listeners already—and hark! wind, and rain, and snow—a goodly night for a tale. Tell on, dear grandam; the fire is bright, the lamp is clear, and we are seated gravely, our thoughts composed to attention—now for thy wondrous tale!”
“It was on this very eve, many years since, my children,” began the noble lady to her auditors, “that the three lovely daughters of a noble house assembled together in a dreary wood to try the charm of the night, which if successful was to give to their earnest sight the phantom form of the lover who was afterwards to become the husband. Their powerful curiosity had stifled their fear (for they were as timid as beautiful) on their first setting out on this expedition; but, on finding themselves alone in the dark and melancholy wood, some touches of cowardice and compunction assailed them together, and they determined by a somewhat holy beginning to sanctify the purpose which had brought them thither. They were too young to laugh at this mock compact between God and the Devil, and therefore when Catherine, the eldest sister, began, in an audible voice, to recite the prayer against witchcraft, the others joined in it most devoutly. Now then, fortified against evil, their courage rose with every additional sentence; and when the soft voice of the young Agnes, the loveliest and youngest of the three, steadily responded the
