Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 1 - 1819.djvu/123

Rh bell should be rung half an hour later than usual. The hermit maintained and bucklered his opinion, by quotations from Malleus Maleficarum, Sprengerus, Remigius, and other learned dæmonologists, that the Evil One, thus seduced to remain behind the appointed hour, would assume her true shape, and having appeared to her terrified lover as a fiend of hell, would vanish from him in a flash of sulphureous lightning. Raymond of Ravenswood acquiesced in the experiment, not incurious concerning the issue, though confident it would disappoint the expectations of the hermit.

On the appointed hour the lovers met, and their interview was protracted beyond that at which they usually parted, by the delay of the priest to ring his usual curfew, No change took place upon the nymph's outward form; but as soon as the lengthening shadows made her aware that the usual hour of the vesper chime was passed, she tore herself from her lover's arms with a