Page:The Enchanted Knights; or The Chronicle of the Three Sisters.djvu/50

38 meeting was very affectionate on either side. Adelaide had information of all that had occurred in her father’s house, and knew Reginald to be her after-born brother. Her husband, Edgar, was under the influence of the enchantment during six weeks, and was himself again on the seventh. In one of those weeks he had visited, in cognito, the court of his father-in-law, and so reported, from time to time, what passed there. Adelaide invited her brother to await the next metamorphosis, and though it would not take place for six weeks he joyfully agreed to her proposal. She secreted him in a hollow tree, daily providing him with such food from the magazine in her sofa as would remain untainted for six weeks. She dismissed him with the well-meant exhortation:—“Do not, as you value life, expose yourself to the glance of Edgar’s eagle eye. If he sees you within his range you are lost—he tears out your eyes, and plucks out your heart, as he did yesterday to three of your squires then seeking you in this forest.” Reginald shuddered at the fate of his squires, promised to be careful, and stopped for the six weeks in the Patmos of the hollow tree; but, from time to time, he enjoyed the conversation of his sister when my lord eagle was abroad. This proof of