However the natural gifts and native character of Hilda might be
perverted by the visionary and delusive studies habitual to her, there
was in her very infirmities a grandeur, not without its pathos. In
this position which she had assumed between the earth and the heaven,
she stood so solitary and in such chilling air,--all the doubts that
beset her lonely and daring soul came in such gigantic forms of terror
and menace!--On the verge of the mighty Heathenesse sinking fast into
the night of ages, she towered amidst the shades, a shade herself; and
round her gathered the last demons of the Dire Belief, defying the
march of their luminous foe, and concentering round their mortal
priestess, the wrecks of their horrent empire over a world redeemed.

All the night that succeeded her last brief conference with Harold,
the Vala wandered through the wild forest land, seeking haunts or
employed in collecting herbs, hallowed to her dubious yet solemn lore;
and the last stars were receding into the cold grey skies, when,
returning homeward, she beheld within the circle of the Druid temple a
motionless object, stretched on the ground near the Teuton's grave;
she approached, and perceived what seemed a corpse, it was so still
and stiff in its repose, and the face upturned to the stars was so
haggard and death-like;--a face horrible to behold; the evidence of
extreme age was written on the shrivelled livid skin and the deep
furrows, but the expression retained that intense malignity which
belongs to a power of life that extreme age rarely knows. The garb,
which was that of a remote fashion, was foul and ragged, and neither
by the garb, nor by the face, was it easy to guess what was the sex of
this seeming corpse. But by a strange and peculiar odour that rose
from the form [179], and a certain glistening on the face, and the
lean folded hands, Hilda knew that the creature was one of those
witches, esteemed of all the most deadly and abhorred, who, by the