"Handle it as if it was a baby. Gently, gently, or you will knock the boat's bottom out! Swing it more aft! There, now, let her drop amidships! Easy--not too fast! There she lies between the thwarts like a pig in a pillory!"

The box was safely lowered into the launch, and followed with alacrity by the men: the captain and his new lieutenant were also preparing to go down, when each, at the same instant, felt himself touched from behind, and, turning round, Elpsy confronted them.

"Who art thou, in the name of Beelzebub's mother?" demanded the captain, staring with astonishment, not unmingled with superst.i.tious dread, on the deformed and hideous being who had so suddenly and mysteriously appeared to him.

"I would speak with thee, Edmund Turill!"

"Then thou art Sathanas!" he cried, with astonishment; "how knowest thou me?"

"It matters not. I know thee," she replied, in a tone of mystery. "That youth goes with thee?" she added, inquiringly.

"He does!"

"See, then, that he is well treated, and receives not ill at thy hands.

Remember, once thou hadst a son!"

"Who art thou, i'the name of all the saints, woman?"

"It matters not. When thou thinkest of thy poor boy's bones, gibbeted for sharing thy guilt o'er the gate of Cork, the winds whistling through them with a sad wail, look kindly on this youth, and take him to thy heart, as if he were thine own flesh and blood!"

"I will do it," he said, with emotion.

"Swear it."

"I swear it!"

"'Tis well. One question I have to ask thee, and truly answer it."

"Name it, woman!"

"Where wanders Hurtel of the Red-Hand?"

"'Tis said he died in the Indies!"

"'Tis false!" she cried, with energy. "He can never die unaccursed by her he has wronged. No, no! he will have one to watch his pillow in his dying throes he would rather burn in h.e.l.l, to which he is doomed, than see. No, no! his time has not yet come! his master will not let him slip out o' life so easily. Oh, it will be a glory to see him die; and mock his groans; and laugh, laugh at his terrors! Ha, ha, ha! Oh, will it not be a jubilee to see him struggle with the death!"

"I'G.o.d's name, woman, tell me who thou art?"

"Dost not behold what I am? Wouldst have fair winds, I will raise thee foul: wouldst have a smooth sea, I will make it boil and hiss: wilt say a prayer, I will turn it into a curse ere it can leave thy lips."

"Avaunt, sorceress!" he cried, crossing himself with horror.

"Ha, ha! so you can feel my power! Oh, well! it is a-pleasant to make men's stout hearts quake. Dost know me?" she asked, impressively, approaching her face close to his.

"No!" he said, retreating and preparing to descend the rock. "Avoid thee, Sathanas!"

"Listen!" she said, approaching and laying her hand on his arm, and whispering low in his ear.

"_Thou!_" he exclaimed, instantly starting back, and surveying her with mingled surprise, curiosity, and disgust.

"Wouldst care to leave thy revels and their lord, and, stealing to her lone room, offer thy drunken love to her now! Ha, ha, ha! Does she not look a comely leman for thy licentious love?" she added, with malicious irony.

He gazed on her a few seconds by the light of the moon, and seemed too much overpowered by surprise to speak. At length he said, in a tone of horror,

"Hideous as thou art, it must be as thou sayest, for only thus could I be known to thee! But, holy St. Claus!" he added, in a tone, "this lad--is he--"

"No matter who he is! see thou harm him not!"

"I will be a father to him, woman! 'Fore Heaven," he exclaimed afresh, gazing upon her with mingled curiosity and pity, "was there ever such a--"

"Mind me not! spare your sympathy! Go!--Stay!" she cried, earnestly recalling him; "if you ever meet _him_, breathe not into his ears what and whom you have this night seen. I have made myself known to thee for this youth's sake. Farewell, young man," she said, approaching Lester as he stood on the rock, to which he had bounded from the balcony at the beginning of their conference. She extended her hand as she spoke. He took it, and grasped it warmly saying, in a soothing tone,

"Good-by, Elpsy. I have no ill-will against thee in my heart. Thou hast done but thy duty!"

The sorceress seemed to be moved, turned away from him without speaking, as if her feelings choked utterance, and stalked away through the hall, and left the tower.

"Come, my lad," said the captain, turning away and speaking with feeling, after following with his eyes her retreating form till it disappeared in the forest, "she is a poor, unhappy creature, and it'll come hard, I'm thinking, on him that made her so. But this is no time for sentiment. Let us aboard and make an offing ere the dawn; for, if we are spied lying here, we shall have the king's bulldog down upon us from windward I saw lying in Cor Bay, who will bark to some purpose if he should catch us here on a lee sh.o.r.e."

Thus speaking, the old seaman lightly descended the rock to the boat, followed by his youthful lieutenant, and in a few minutes they reached the vessel.

The moment his foot touched the deck the captain gave orders to make sail: the long, crooked tiller was put hard up to windward; the heavy mainsail swung back to its place; the vessel's head turned slowly off, and, feeling the wind on her quarter, she stood in landward for a few seconds to gain headway, and then came gracefully round with her starboard bow to the wind. With each broad sail drawn nearly fore and aft, she lay as near it as her short blunt build would permit, and stretched away from the sh.o.r.e on a long tack towards the south.

CHAPTER VII.

"If solitude succeed to grief, Release from pain is light relief; The vacant bosom's wilderness Might thank the pang that made it less.

The heart once left thus desolate Must fly at last for ease--to hate."

_The Giaour._

The narrative once more returns to Mark, who, it will be remembered, had arrived, on his way to Castle More, at a ruin in the midst of the forest he was traversing, when the approach of two hors.e.m.e.n caused him to withdraw from the path. As he did so, they were encountered and stopped by some one who unexpectedly met them as they were galloping past the lonely pile. Curious to know who they were and what could be their business at that late hour, he entered the deep shadow of the tower, and approached so near them as to discover that the men wore the livery of Lady Lester, and that the person with whom they were talking was none other than the witch Elpsy, with whose person he had been familiar from childhood.

After Elpsy disappeared from the eyes of the old bucanier and his young lieutenant at Hurtel's tower, she had continued to move rapidly through the forest towards Castle Cor, without turning either to the right or left. Sometimes she would skip forward with mad hilarity till exhausted; at others, leap, and clap her hands, and shout, till the dales of the old wood rung again with her shrieking laughter. From the unnatural speed, and the wild, straight-forward direction in which she moved, her sole object seemed to be to reach some point for which she aimed in the least possible time. The scared owl hooted aloud at her approach, and flew, with a heavy flap of his thick wings, deeper into the wood; the hawk left his nest with a shrill cry; the deer fled from her path! On, on she bounded and leaped mocking their notes of terror, like a demon pursued. At times, when she crossed an open glade, where the moon poured down her un.o.bstructed radiance, she would suddenly stop and mutter, but without appearing to notice the pale orb the sight of which, by directing her thoughts into another, but not less turbulent channel, seemed to have exercised a momentary influence on her. She had travelled six miles in less than one hour's time, when she suddenly stopped in the full light of the moon, looked up, and shook her open hands towards it with a laugh of derision.

"Oh, ho! you need not look and watch, and watch and look, and keep your pale face and shining eyes always fixed on me! Dost think I would commit murder? and the little twinkling stars peer down as if they could espy a knife in my hand! Look, ye little glittering winklings," she cried, spreading upward her open palms, "dost see a knife? Ha, ha, ha! ye are out there. I am too much for ye. No, I know ye well, with your winking and your blinking at each other, and how, in the darkest night, one of you always keeps watch, to spy the murders done in the absence o' the sun; and then you whisper it through heaven, and tell it to the earth, and then we hang for it. Oh, ho! I have a charm will put you to sleep.

Ha! you laugh, and grin, and gibber, that I have lost in a half hour's tale what I have won by years of silence. Well, well, there'll be a time! there'll be a time!"

Dropping her head, she appeared a moment as if in sullen thought, and then muttered, in a tone and manner which, more than words, gave a key to the wild phrensy that had hitherto possessed her,

"If _he_ cannot be Lord of Lester, neither shall HE! He dies! The eye of the moon pierces not this wood! He dies! 'Tis long yet to dawn," she abruptly added, moving forward, and speaking with more coherency. "If I can find him ere the myrmidons of Lady Lester can reach him, should she send for him, Castle More will ne'er own other lord than he who, but for my foul tongue--may it wither in my throat!--would now have been Lord of Lester. He dies! dies! dies! dies!" and, hasting her footsteps, she continued to repeat the word at every stride, accompanying it with a threatening gesture of her arm.

Her rapid speed soon brought her to the ruins of the abbey. Bounding like an ape over the fallen blocks, she entered the door in the tower, and with an unfaltering step traversed the gallery to her subterraneous abode, which, after Lester's angry and fruitless pursuit of her, she had left for Hurtel's tower, fearing that he might despatch a party from Castle More in search of her, for the purpose, by her death, of effectually silencing all question of his birth.

Entering her subterranean abode, she produced a light without flint, or steel, or fire, but by smartly drawing two marks, in opposition to the sign of the cross, on the wall with a small stick, the end of which immediately emitted a blue flame, and, after a fierce, hissing noise, shot up into a bright blaze. This, to the peasantry who had witnessed it, was one of the strongest evidences of her being in league with the devil, who, it was a.s.severated, kindled her stick for her in the unquenchable fire.