Noon came; the sun was pouring its fiercest rays upon the high hill, and Arabel wandered to the thick vines with which the open door of the entrance had been concealed, to catch, if she might, a single breath of air to cool her throbbing brow. Suddenly, away where the tiny, trembling needle told her to look for her former abiding place, she saw a light smoke curling up. Instinctively she trembled with fear, forgetting that the whole wood might be consumed, and still the sheltering rock remain uninjured. “I must see what it is,” she said; and, climbing slowly up the rocks, she reached the top, and proudly, fearlessly looked down below. Scarcely discernible in the thick shadows she saw a party of men, armed with flaming torches, creeping cautiously on toward the Glen. She laughed a wild, ringing laugh, that echoed far and wide; and for many years the weird-like story of the phantom lady, decked in silks and jewels, and laughing at those who tried to discover the pirates’ treasures, was told beside the fire, in the long winter evenings, until at last it was thrown aside as a superstitious falsehood, and now is only remembered in a few families as a quaint legend of former years.
It was only two short days from then that Harris returned, but Bel was a spirit. The excitement of those fearful hours had been too much for her. She drew the downy, silken couch to the side of the spring in the rock, where the clear water fell from the crevices above, with a musical tinkle, into a large open basin below, and there, in that silent room,
“She rested her fair pale face alone
By the cool bright spring in the hallowed stone;”
her jewelled hand supporting her head, crowned with its tiara of velvet and pearls, her long brown hair floating like a veil over her richly-wrought dress, and her slippered feet resting on a smooth slab of Italian marble, which had been brought there to confine the waters in the spring.
And thus they found her, sleeping calmly, peacefully, her eyes closed tightly, and her teeth set firmly together. There was a strange calmness in Harris’ manner, as he pressed his hand upon her cold, damp brow, and swept back her long spiral curls. Then, with a quick, excited glance at her firmly closed eyes, he gave rapid orders for a burial case, such as they always carried with them, to be brought up, that her body might be placed in it and carried to Italy. As he raised the inanimate form in his arms, and laid her head upon a cushion of velvet and eider-down, a paper floated out from the heavy folds of her dress, and rested on the stones at his feet. He took it up; it was a few verses of poetry, traced in the delicate Italian penmanship of Arabel’s own hand. Tears sprang to the almost girlish eyes of the boy, Carl, as he saw them.
“She was like a sister to you, was she not, Carl?” Harris said, kindly, laying his hand upon the boy’s head. A deep sigh was his only answer, and the boy turned away. Then drawing a richly-chased knife from a wrought case by his side, he lifted one of the long ringlets from her dress, and turned a beseeching look upon Harris. “You may have it, Carl,” he answered to the boy’s look; and the bright, polished steel glanced in among the waving hair, until only the gold tipped haft was visible.
“What will you do with that, signor?” Carl said, pointing to the paper. Harris glanced over it, and then read aloud:
“Bury me not by the water’s edge,
Away in my dear old home,