I. [Campbell's Isle]
II. [The Magic Mirror]
III. [The Maniac's Curse]
IV. [The Haunted Room]
V. [The Midnight cry]
VI. ["Off with the Old Love, and on with the New."]
VII. [The Heart's Struggle]
VIII. [The Triumph of Passion]
IX. [The Vision of the Isle]
X. [One of Fortune's Smiles]
XI. [The Storm—The Wreck]
XII. [Sibyl's Return to the Isle]
XIII. [The Meeting]
XIV. [Jealousy]
XV. [Self-Torture]
XVI. [Falsehood and Deceit]
XVII. [A Lull Before the Tempest]
XVIII. [The Fatal Note]
XIX. [That Day]
XX. [What Came Next]
XXI. [That Night]
XXII. [Next Morning]
XXIII. [Morning in the Island]
XXIV. [Christie]
XXV. [The Maniac's Story]
XXVI. [Remorse]
XXVII. [The Widowed Bridegroom]
XXVIII. [The Thunderbolt Falls]
XXIX. [The Devotion of Love]
XXX. [Sibyl's Doom]
XXXI. [The Bankrupt Heart]
XXXII. [Another Storm Within and Without]
XXXIII. [The Dead Alive]
XXXIV. [Explanations]
XXXV. [Meetings and Partings]
THE QUEEN OF THE ISLE;
OR,
A HASTY WOOING.
CHAPTER I.
CAMPBELL'S ISLE.
"The island lies nine leagues away,
Along its solitary shore
Of craggy rock and sandy bay
No sound but ocean's roar,
Save where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home,
Her shrill cry coming through the sparkling foam."—R. H. DANA.
About six miles from the mainland of M——, with its rock-bound coast washed by the waters of the broad Atlantic, was an islet known in the days of which I write as Campbell's Isle.
The island was small—about two miles in length and the same in breadth, but fertile and luxurious. The dense primeval forest, which as yet the destroying ax had scarcely touched, reared itself high and dark in the northern part of the island. A deep, unbroken silence ever reigned here, save when some gay party from the opposite coast visited the island to fish or shoot partridges. Sometimes during the summer, pleasure parties were held here, but in the winter all was silent and dreary on the lonely, isolated little spot.
This island had been, from time immemorial, in the possession of a family named Campbell, handed down from father to son. The people of the surrounding country had learned to look upon them as the rightful lords of the soil, "to the manner born." The means by which it had first come into their possession were seldom thought of, or if thought of, only added to their reputation as a bold and daring race. The legend ran, that long before Calvert came over, a certain Sir Guy Campbell, a celebrated freebooter and scion of the noble Scottish clan of that name, who for some reckless crime had been outlawed and banished, and in revenge had hoisted the black flag and become a rover on the high seas, had, in his wanderings, discovered this solitary island, which he made the place of his rendezvous. Here, with his band of dare-devils—all outlaws like himself—he held many a jolly carousal that made the old woods ring.