There flashed on Mr. Raleigh’s mental sight a vision of the moonlit lake, one instant.  A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman’s form, hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death; the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all.  For that instant he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down to the lake-shore.  It seemed as if his vision yet continued.  They had already put out in boats; he was too late.  He waited in ghastly suspense till they rowed home with their slow freight.  And then his arm supported the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs, round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another man took the burden from him and went up to the house with his dead.

* * * * *

When Mr. Raleigh entered the house again, it was at break of dawn.  Some one opened the library-door and beckoned him in.  Marguerite sprang into his arms.

“What if she had died?” said Mrs. Purcell, with her swift satiric breath, and folding a web of muslin over her arm.  “See!  I had got out the shroud.  As it is, we drink skal and say grace at breakfast.  The funeral baked-meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-feast.  You men are all alike. Le Roi est mort?  Vive la Reine!”

* * * * *

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE.

  Listen, my children, and you shall hear
  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
  On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five: 
  Hardly a man is now alive
  Who remembers that famous day and year.

  He said to his friend,—­“If the British march
  By land or sea from the town to-night,
  Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
  Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—­
  One if by land, and two if by sea;
  And I on the opposite shore will be,
  Ready to ride and spread the alarm
  Through every Middlesex village and farm,
  For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

  Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
  Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
  Just as the moon rose over the bay,
  Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
  The Somersett, British man-of-war: 
  A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
  Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
  And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
  By its own reflection in the tide.

  Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
  Wanders and watches with eager ears,
  Till in the silence around him he hears
  The muster of men at the barrack-door,
  The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
  And the measured tread of the grenadiers
  Marching down to their boats on the shore.