"He soon caught sight of the maiden. She was leaning, half fainting,
against the precipice. She had heard her lover's last cry, and although
it had conveyed no suggestion of his voice to her ear, she trembled from
head to foot, and her limbs would bear her no farther. He checked his
speed, rode gently up to her, lifted her unresisting, laid her across
the shoulders of his horse, and, riding carefully till he reached a more
open path, dashed again wildly along the mountain-side. The lady's long
hair was shaken loose, and dropped trailing on the ground. The horse
trampled upon it, and stumbled, half dragging her from the saddle-bow.
He caught her, lifted her up, and looked at her face. She was dead. I
suppose he went mad. He laid her again across the saddle before him, and
rode on, reckless whither. Horse, and man, and maiden were found the
next day, lying at the foot of a cliff, dashed to pieces. It was
observed that a hind-shoe of the horse was loose and broken. Whether
this had been the cause of his fall, could not be told; but ever when he
races, as race he will, till the day of doom, along that mountain-side,
his gallop is mingled with the clank of the loose and broken shoe. For,
like the sin, the punishment is awful: he shall carry about for ages the
phantom-body of the girl, knowing that her soul is away, sitting with
the soul of his brother, down in the deep ravine, or scaling with him
the topmost crags of the towering mountain-peaks. There are some who,
from time to time, see the doomed man careering along the face of the
mountain, with the lady hanging across the steed; and they say it always
betokens a storm, such as this which is now raving around us."

I had not noticed till now, so absorbed had I been in her tale, that the
storm had risen to a very ecstasy of fury.

"They say, likewise, that the lady's hair is still growing; for, every
time they see her, it is longer than before; and that now such is its