CHAPTER I

Blow, blow, thou wintry wind.--SHAKESPEARE.

Blow, breezes, blow.--MOORE.

A STORM.--A RUSTIC REPAST.--AN ALARM.--UNCOMMON READINESS IN A CHILD.--AN INUNDATED STRANGER.--A CASTLE OUT OF REPAIR.--AN IMPAIRED CHARACTER.

It was on a nocturnal night in autumnal October; the wet rain fell in liquid quantities, and the thunder rolled in an awful and Ossianly manner. The lowly, but peaceful inhabitants of a small, but decent cottage, were just sitting down to their homely, but wholesome supper, when a loud knocking at the door alarmed them. Bertram armed himself with a ladle. 'Lackadaisy!' cried old Margueritone, and little Billy seized the favourable moment to fill his mouth with meat. Innocent fraud! happy childhood!

The father's lustre and the mother's bloom.--THOMPSON.

Bertram then opened the door; when lo! pale, breathless, dripping, and with a look that would have shocked the Humane Society, a beautiful female tottered into the room.

'Lackadaisy, Ma'am,' said Margueritone, 'are you wet?'

'Wet!' exclaimed the fair unknown, wringing a rivulet of rain from the corner of her robe; 'O ye gods, wet!'

Margueritone felt the justice, the gentleness of the reproof, and turned the subject, by recommending a glass of spirits.

Spirit of my sainted sire.

The stranger sipped, shook her head, and fainted. Her hair was long and dark, and the bed was ready; so since she seems in distress, we will leave her there awhile; lest we should betray an ignorance of the world, in appearing not to know the proper time for deserting people.

On the rocky summit of a beetling precipice, whose base was lashed by the angry Atlantic, stood a moated, and turreted structure, called Il Castello di Grimgothico.

As the northern tower had remained uninhabited since the death of its late lord, Henriques De Violenci, lights and figures were, _par consequence_, observed in it at midnight. Besides, the black eyebrows of the present baron had a habit of meeting for several years, and _quelquefois_, he paced the picture-gallery with a hurried step. These circumstances combined, there could be no doubt of his having committed murder. Accordingly, all avoided him, except the Count Stiletto, and the hectic, but heavenly Hysterica. The former, he knew, was the most pale-faced, flagitious character in the world. But birds of a plume associate. The latter shall be presented to the reader in the next chapter.