After the third time of her passing he heard a sudden splash in the water, and covering his eyes for a moment, with an odd sensation of dread lest he should see one so fair plunge into the dark and gloomy abyss, he opened them again, to see but the ripples ever widening towards the shore. That a feeling of superstitious awe came over him at this wonderful vision, Master Vere could not deny, and for awhile the still midnight air, so lately peopled in his thoughts with angelic beings, seemed filled instead with uncanny visitants from a doubtful world. His thoughts seemed to be precipitated suddenly, not only from heaven to earth, but surely to regions below the earth! And yet--so beautiful a vision could not be from the Evil One? The spiritual beauty of those large sorrowful eyes and that sweet pale countenance haunted him. Could there indeed be truth in these weird old legends, and if so, for what intent were such visions permitted, and whence came they? He walked to the brink of the lake, and gazed steadfastly into its black depths, no longer ruffled by the smallest ripple, and showing only a motionless surface, dark and silent as the grave. No breath of human life save his own seemed stirring in the vast solitude; only the pale, cold moon sailed proudly overhead, ever and anon hiding her shining face beneath some fleecy cloudlet, ere the light breeze caught it and wantonly tossed it into a thousand fairy fragments. "I conjure thee, maiden," said the chaplain, in half serious, half comic earnestness, "if thou art a reality, show thyself again for one moment, that I may know whether or no I am in right possession of my senses, or but the victim of some foolish hallucination, bred by my long wandering in the unearthly silence of this mountain!" But no voice answered from the mysterious Pool, and no motion upon its dark surface betokened that the immortal maiden would vouchsafe to grant a perplexed mortal's prayer.