of his romantic reveries; when suddenly the semblance of a black
hat and feather caught his eye among the foliage of the projecting
oak. He started up, shifted his position, and got a glimpse of a
blue gown. It was his lady of the lake, his enchantress of the
ruined castle, divided from him by a barrier which, at a few yards
below, he could almost overleap, yet unapproachable but by a
circuit perhaps of many hours. He watched with intense anxiety.
To listen if she breathed was out of the question: the noses of a
dean and chapter would have been soundless in the roar of the
torrent. From her extreme stillness, she appeared to sleep: yet
what creature, not desperate, would go wilfully to sleep in such a
place? Was she asleep, then? Nay, was she alive? She was as
motionless as death. Had she been murdered, thrown from above, and
caught in the tree? She lay too regularly and too composedly for
such a supposition. She was asleep, then, and, in all probability,
her waking would be fatal. He shifted his position. Below the
pool two beetle-browed rocks nearly overarched the chasm, leaving
just such a space at the summit as was within the possibility of a
leap; the torrent roared below in a fearful gulf. He paused some
time on the brink, measuring the practicability and the danger, and
casting every now and then an anxious glance to his sleeping
beauty. In one of these glances he saw a slight movement of the
blue gown, and, in a moment after, the black hat and feather
dropped into the pool. Reflection was lost for a moment, and, by a
sudden impulse, he bounded over the chasm.

He stood above the projecting oak; the unknown beauty lay like the
nymph of the scene; her long black hair, which the fall of her hat
had disengaged from its fastenings, drooping through the boughs:
he saw that the first thing to be done, was to prevent her throwing