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 “No human creature, if report ays true, Edmund, returns from this fatal wood, to tell the deeds of darknes acted in it. My attendants, I gues, would quit us ere we palled a pot whoe fame is widely diffued.”

“What is it of which fame peaks o loudly?”

“Know then,” aid the king, “long after the light of chritianityChristianity [sic] was pread over Scotland, that the Danes, who poeed the Orcades, practied the horrid rites of paganim, and reared here alo their idols, before whom barbarous and bloody rites were practied. To thoe fale deities, if tradition ays true, which transmits the tale to thee later days, was this wood conecrated; and in its inmot gloomy reces, it is till believed, tand the remains of a palace of thoe pagan kings, where till it is told dwell women who mock at our holy religion, and ecretly pay homage to an accured idol, which is hid by them during the day, obedient to whoe potent pells the unblet pirits, who it is aid walk here their nightly rounds, fly on their michievous errands, auming uch hapes as bet fit their purpoe.”

They had left the wood for a coniderable pace behind them, when a light appearing through the fog, which they hoped proceeded from ome cottage which they had not oberved, they rode forward in that direction with all the peed their overwearied teeds would permit.

The light eemed to retreat, and glimmered from the ame ditance, as when they firt remarked it, though now in a different place, for it appeared to the wet. They tood–it vanihed, and a low inditinct murmur was heard. Again a brighter light hot in another direction, through the duky air. “Let us,” aid Edmund, “proceed.” Which with their eyes fixed on the light that now appeared tationary, they did ome way; but when they imagined it within a tone’s throw of them, their hores, as if obedient to the mandate, refued to proceed, though urged by the pur, as a voice ditinctly cried, “Stop.” At the ame moment the deceitful glimmering vanihed. Dazzled by o long beholding it through the thick and