' Written in red on several succeeding leaves--
scrawled as if in haste and barely legible--were
the following lines, which Holker read aloud, while
his companion continued scanning the dim grey
confines of their narrow world and hearing matter
of apprehension in the drip of water from every bur-
dened branch:
'Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood
In the lit gloom of an enchanted wood.
The cypress there and myrtle twined their
boughs,
Significant, in baleful brotherhood.
'The brooding willow whispered to the yew;
Beneath, the deadly nightshade and the rue,
With immortelles self-woven into strange
Funereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew.
'No song of bird nor any drone of bees,
Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze:
The air was stagnant all, and Silence was
A living thing that breathed among the trees.
'Conspiring spirits whispered in the gloom,
Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb.
With blood the trees were all adrip; the leaves
Shone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom.
'I cried aloud!--the spell, unbroken still,
Rested upon my spirit and my will.
Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn,
I strove with monstrous presages of ill!
'At last the viewless--'
Holker ceased reading; there was no more to
read. The manuscript broke off in the middle of a
line.
'That sounds like Bayne,' said Jaralson, who was
something of a scholar in his way.
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