But Sheila leaves my chair to go,
And flings the shutter wide;
"Be it for me," she whispers low,
"The banshee keened and cried."
God be between our house and harm,
For trouble comes full fleet.
I hold the babe close in my arm;
The fairy in the street.
But the wind that blew from the hill-side carried the keening of the little bride past the village, and blew it about the windows of the castle wherein Black Roderick dwelt. And as the cry keened and called, so did the sleepers turn in their beds and moan uneasily in their dreaming.
When the cry passed the windows of the east, it went to the windows of the west, and there it tapped softly with fingers of the wind and called three times:
"Roderick! Roderick! Roderick!"
And at the first call Black Roderick turned in his bed and groaned. And at the second call he rose from his couch and said, in his anger:
"Who calleth, and will not let me rest?"
But at the third call he rose and went to the window in wonder, and seeing nothing he crept cold and trembling to his bed, muttering the half-forgotten prayers of his childhood; so long he lay in fear and amazement that he did not sleep till the lark hung singing in the heavens, and then he knew the night was gone and with it the ghosts that hide in the darkness. So he turned his face to the wall and slept. But the spirit of the little bride was speeding on her swift and terrible race to Paradise, and round her whirled three great black birds seeking for her destruction. And as she flew, one caught her by the long hair that swept behind her in the wind and drew her backward.
"Now," quoth she with a cry, "I can fly upward no longer; some evil thing draws me back from heaven."
And as she spoke a voice came out of the dark skies, and said: