CHAPTER II.

THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN ARAM AND THE STRANGER.

The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffle me.
--Manfred.

Meanwhile Aram strode rapidly through the village, and not till he had
regained the solitary valley did he relax his step.

The evening had already deepened into night. Along the sere and
melancholy wood, the autumnal winds crept, with a lowly, but gathering
moan. Where the water held its course, a damp and ghostly mist clogged
the air, but the skies were calm, and chequered only by a few clouds,
that swept in long, white, spectral streaks, over the solemn stars. Now
and then, the bat wheeled swiftly round, almost touching the figure of
the Student, as he walked musingly onward. And the owl [Note: That
species called the short-eared owl.] that before the month waned many
days, would be seen no more in that region, came heavily from the trees,
like a guilty thought that deserts its shade. It was one of those nights,
half dim, half glorious, which mark the early decline of the year. Nature
seemed restless and instinct with change; there were those signs in the
atmosphere which leave the most experienced in doubt, whether the morning
may rise in storm or sunshine. And in this particular period, the skiey
influences seem to tincture the animal life with their own mysterious and
wayward spirit of change. The birds desert their summer haunts; an
unaccountable inquietude pervades the brute creation; even men in this
unsettled season have considered themselves, more (than at others)