"I had a strange presentiment of evil concerning you, sweetheart," he said, as they slowly climbed the steep green slopes towards Craig Aran Peak, "on that evening when, as your mother has told me, you wandered out to the Robbers' Cavern, and witnessed the gipsy's dying struggles. And in the lonely darkness of the night it gathered new force, and greatly tormented me, insomuch that when at last I fell into uneasy slumbers, fearful dreams haunted me. I dreamed that you were in great agony of spirit, and longing for my presence, while I was powerless to come to you; and in my misery I called your name loudly twice or thrice, and so awoke with the sound of my own voice ringing in my ear, conscious that in that matter it had been no mere dream, but that I had verily called your name aloud in the darkness. My own words, 'Shanno, Shanno!' seemed to re-echo through my silent chamber, and as they died away I lay down again peacefully, feeling that the spell of my evil dream was broken, and resting in calm assurance of your safety." Primrose had listened with bated breath. "I knew it was truly your voice I heard, my beloved," she said eagerly, "and no delusion of my excited fancy! Twice I heard my name, spoken in your own loved tones, but full of pain and sad entreaty, ring through the silent mountains, as I knelt in my misery over the dark pool's brink, about to plunge into its depths, there to end for ever my intolerable agony; and as I listened, spellbound, the mountain-echoes all around took up the cry, till the very air was filled with your voice, Percival, your voice crying my name in soft sad music among the dark lonely hill-tops! As clearly as I now hear you speak to me, your cry, 'Shanno, Shanno!' was borne to me upon the midnight breeze, and it saved me from the dark grave where my poor crazed brain thought to find the only rest this miserable earth afforded! But for that cry of yours, my beloved, through which God in His mercy spoke to me, I should ere now have surely shut myself out from His presence and from your pure love to all eternity!--unless, think you, Percival, my deed might perchance have found pardon in the sight of Him who saw all my utter misery, and knew it was fast turning my poor weak brain?"