that confined it. Here are my air and my earth!
Trouble me not. Look to the circle—feed the
lamps if they fail."

I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked
towards a place in the ring in which the flame
was waning dim. And I whispered to her the
same question which I had whispered to
Margrave. She looked slowly around and answered,
"So is it before the Invisible make themselves
visible! Did I not bid him forbear?" Her head
again drooped on her breast, and her watch was
again fixed on the fire.

I advanced to the circle and stooped to
replenish the light where it waned. As I did so,
on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond
the line of the ring, I felt a shock like that of
electricity. The arm fell to my side numbed and
nerveless, and from my hand dropped, but within
the ring, the vessel that contained the fluid.
Recovering my surprise or my stun, hastily with
the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some
of the scanty liquid was already spilled on the
sward; and I saw with a thrill of dismay that
contrasted, indeed, the tranquil indifference with
which I had first undertaken my charge, how
small a supply was now left,

I went back to Margrave, and told him of the
shock, and of its consequence in the waste of the
liquid.

"Beware," said he, " that not a motion of the
arm, not an inch of the foot, pass the verge of
the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappily
stinted, reserve all that is left for the protecting
circle and the twelve outer lamps. See how the
Grand Work advances! how the hues in the
caldron are glowing blood-red through the film on
the surface!"

And now four hours of the six were gone;
my arm had gradually recovered its strength.
Neither the ring nor the lamps had again
required replenishing; perhaps their light was
exhausted less quickly, as it was no longer to be
exposed to the rays of the intense Australian
moon. Clouds had gathered over the sky, and
though the moon gleamed at times in the gaps
that they left in blue air, her beam was more
hazy and dulled. The locusts no longer were
heard in the grass, nor the howl of the dogs in
the forest. Out of the circle, the stillness was
profound.

And about this time I saw distinctly in
the distance a vast Eye! It drew nearer and
nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the
height of some lofty giant. Its gaze riveted
mine; my blood curdled in the blaze from its
angry ball; and now as it advanced, larger and
larger, other Eyes, as if of giants in its train,
grew out from the space in its rear: numbers on
numbers, like the spear-heads of some Eastern
army, seen afar by pale warders of battlements
doomed to the dust. My voice long refused an
utterance to my awe; at length it burst forth,
shrill and loud:

"Look—look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions
on legions. And hark! that tramp of numberless
feet; they are not seen, but the hollows of
earth echo the sound of their march!"

Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron,
in which, from time to time, he kept dropping
powders or essences drawn forth from his coffer,
looked up, defyingly, fiercely:

"Ye come," he said, in low mutter, his once
mighty voice sounding hollow and labouring, but
fearless and firm—" ye come, not to conquer,
vain rebels!—ye, whose dark chief I struck down
at my feet in the tomb where my spell had raised
up the ghost of your first human master, the
Chaldee! Earth and air have their armies still
faithful to me, and still I remember the war-song
that summons them up to confront you! Ayesha
—Ayesha! recal the wild troth that we pledged
amongst roses; recal the dread bond by which
we united our sway over hosts that yet own thee
as queen, though my sceptre is broken, my
diadem reft from my brows!"

The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration.
Her veil now was withdrawn, and the
blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself
flushed, as with the rosy bloom of youth, the
grand beauty of her softened face. It was seen,
detached, as it were, from her dark-mantled
form; seen through the mist of the vapours
which rose from the caldron, framing it round
like the clouds that are yieldingly pierced by the
light of the evening star.

Through the haze of the vapour came her
voice, more musical, more plaintive than I had
heard it before, but far softer, more tender; still
in her foreign tongue; the words unknown to
me, and yet their sense, perhaps, made intelligible
by the love, which has one common
language and one common look to all who have
loved —the love unmistakably heard in the loving
tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face.

A moment or so more, and she had come
round from the opposite side of the fire pile, and,
bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed
it quietly, solemnly; and then her countenance
grew fierce, her crest rose erect: it was the
lioness protecting her young. She stretched
forth her arm from the black mantle, athwart
the pale front that now again bent over the
caldron; stretched it towards the haunted and
hollow-sounding space beyond, in the gesture of
one whose right hand has the sway of the sceptre!
And then her voice stole on the air in the music
of a chant not loud, yet far-reaching; so thrilling,
so sweet, and yet so solemn, that I could at
once comprehend how legend united of old the
spell of enchantment with the power of song.
All that I recalled of the effects which, in the
former time, Margrave's strange chants had
produced on the ear that they ravished and the
thoughts they confused, was but as the wild
bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth,
and the art, and the soul of the singer, whose
voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthral
all the tribes of creation, though the language it
used for that charm might to them, as to me, be
unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, from