“You look greatly disturbed, Alizon, as if you had been visited by a nightmare in your sleep, and were still under its influence.”

Alizon made no reply.

“A few hours’ tranquil sleep will restore you,” pursued Mistress Nutter, “and you will forget your fears.  You must not indulge in these nocturnal rambles again, or they may be attended with dangerous consequences.  I may not have a second warning dream.  Come to the house.”

And, as Alizon followed her along the garden path, she could not help asking herself, though with little hope in the question, if all she had witnessed was indeed nothing more than a troubled dream.

END OF THE FIRST BOOK.

THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES.

BOOK THE SECOND.

Pendle Forest.

CHAPTER I.—­FLINT.

A lovely morning succeeded the strange and terrible night.  Brightly shone the sun upon the fair Calder as it winded along the green meads above the bridge, as it rushed rejoicingly over the weir, and pursued its rapid course through the broad plain below the Abbey.  A few white vapours hung upon the summit of Whalley Nab, but the warm rays tinging them with gold, and tipping with fire the tree-tops that pierced through them, augured their speedy dispersion.  So beautiful, so tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop.  The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove.  Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders’ webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken.  No traces were visible on the sod where the unhallowed crew had danced their round; nor were any ashes left where the fire had burnt and the caldron had bubbled.  The brass-covered tombs of the abbots in the presbytery looked as if a century had passed over them without disturbance; while the graves in the cloister cemetery, obliterated, and only to be detected when a broken coffin or a mouldering bone was turned up by the tiller of the ground, preserved their wonted appearance.  The face of nature had received neither impress nor injury from the fantastic freaks and necromantic exhibitions of the witches.  Every thing looked as it was left overnight; and the only footprints to be detected were those of the two girls, and of the party who came in quest of them.  All else had passed by like a vision or a dream.  The rooks cawed loudly in the neighbouring trees, as if discussing the question of breakfast, and the jackdaws wheeled merrily round the tall spire, which sprang from the eastern end of the fane.