Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand,

When Jews were burned, or banished from

the land.

Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy;
The demon whose delight is to destroy

Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet toné, "Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!"

And now, in that old castle in the wood,
His daughters, in the dawn of womanhood,
Returning from their convent school, had made
Resplendent with their bloom the forest shade,
Reminding him of their dead mother's face,
When first she came into that gloomy place,-

A

memory in his heart as dim and sweet

As moonlight in a solitary street,

Where the same rays, that lift the sea, are

thrown

Lovely but powerless upon walls of stone.

These two fair daughters of a mother dead

Were all the dream had left him as it

fled.

A joy at first, and then a growing care,
As if a voice within him cried," Beware!"
A vague presentiment of impending doom,
Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room,
Haunted him day and night; a formless fear
That death to some one of his house was near,
With dark surmises of a hidden crime,

Made life itself a death before its time.
Jealous, suspicious, with no sense of shame,
A spy upon his daughters he became ;
With velvet slippers, noiseless on the floors,
He glided softly through half-open doors;
Now in the room, and now upon the stair,
He stood beside them ere they were aware;
He listened in the passage when they talked,
He watched them from the casement when they
walked,

He saw the gypsy haunt the river's side,

He saw the monk among the cork-trees glide; And, tortured by the mystery and the doubt. Of some dark secret, past his finding out, Baffled he paused; then reassured again Pursued the flying phantom of his brain.

He watched them even when they knelt in

church;

And then, descending lower in his search, Questioned the servants, and with cager eyes Listened incredulous to their replies;

The gypsy

? none had seen her in the wood!

The monk? a mendicant in search of food!

At length the awful revelation came,

Crushing at once his pride of birth and name,
The hopes his yearning bosom forward cast,
And the ancestral glories of the past;
All fell together, crumbling in disgrace,
A turret rent from battlement to base.

His daughters talking in the dead of night
In their own chamber, and without a light,
Listening, as he was wont, he overheard,
And learned the dreadful secret, word by word;
And hurrying from his castle, with a cry
He raised his hands to the unpitying sky,
Repeating one dread word, till bush and tree
Caught it, and shuddering answered, "Heresy!"

Wrapped in his cloak, his hat drawn o'er his

face,

Now hurrying forward, now with lingering

pace,

He walked all night the alleys of his park,
With one unseen companion in the dark,

The Demon who within him lay in wait,
And by his presence turned his love to hate,
Forever muttering in an undertone,

"Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his

Upon the morrow, after early Mass,

While yet the dew was glistening on the grass, And all the woods were musical with birds,

The old Hidalgo, uttering fearful words,

Walked homeward with the Priest, and in his

room

Summoned his trembling daughters to their doom.

When questioned, with brief answers they

replied,

Nor when accused evaded or denied ;
Expostulations, passionate appeals,

All that the human heart most fears or feels,
In vain the Priest with earnest voice essayed,
In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed;
Until at last he said, with haughty mien,
"The Holy Office, then, must intervene !"

And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain,
With all the fifty horsemen of his train,