The story even of "The Bride of
the Mistletoe-Bough" might be verified, if we could but get a peep. At
last we prevailed. The child was persuaded to dismount, we lifted the
cover, and the chest was empty,--literally empty.
Once more the plain fact of the present had swept away the cobwebs of
the past, the real had banished the ideal. While the child of to-day
sought only a comfortable rest from weariness, we had been seeking
myths. She looked on as indignant as a dethroned queen. We turned away a
little mortified, and a good deal disappointed.
But the Fenella of the castle was not so very tired, after all. True,
she was tired of the old manor-house, tired of us, tired of her own dull
routine of duty; but there was a well-spring of freshness in her yet.
She moved languidly, to be sure, as she now led the way to the tower,
the only portion of the castle yet unvisited. Following her, we
ascended, first, to a bare upper room, a sort of anteroom, from which
the ascent to the tower commenced. It presented a solid inclosure of
stone, except on the western side, where it was dimly lighted through
one or two slits in the masonry. Turning my eyes in this direction, I
saw our little guide leaning against the stone framework of one of these
chinks in the wall.
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