The usual ominous silence and shaking of heads followed this oft-repeated query, but this time the silence was broken by a hoarse voice, muttering in deep, harsh tones, "Will the curse ever be taken away from the hill, say you? Ay, when the boatman's bridge cracks across the middle, and the primrose and the lily float together down the stream! But the curse hath already set the castle walls a-crumbling, and they shall crumble till the end of time!" Close at Jack the boatman's ear was the voice which spake the mysterious prophecy; and as in anger he turned, to deny the possibility of any such fate being in store for his beloved bridge, he encountered the wild glance of a dark-faced gipsy-woman, whose sudden appearance at the open doorway had already caused the women-gossips to beat a hasty retreat into the farther corner of the shop. "My bridge will stand these hundred years, woman!" he exclaimed indignantly. "It was for a blessing to my neighbours that I built it, and a blessing it shall stand, long after you and I are laid in our graves!" The old hag laughed harshly; and Mistress Griffiths, laying a persuasive hand on Jack's arm, said entreatingly, "Ah, Jack, thou art never the man to wish aught to stand in the way of taking off the awful curse! Let the bridge break to-night and willing, if the castle curse should go with it!" Jack laughed a sorrowful laugh. "The woman is a witch," he said impatiently, "and her talk has no more meaning than the screaming wind." "Eh!" said the gipsy; and placing her lean hand on his arm, and peering into his face with her coal-black eyes, she chanted in a monotonous tone-- "The curse shall not fall from the castle Till the last heir lies in the grave; And the grave shall lie deep in the river, Wherein sleep the fair and the brave." "_My_ bridge shall never be the death of the last heir!" muttered Jack savagely, while his friends, in breathless silence, pressed closer to the gipsy. She went on with uplifted finger-- "The bridge shall be broken asunder, Shall sink in the raging deep; And in the dark waters together The primrose and lily shall sleep." While her listeners were looking at each other with awe-struck faces, the gipsy was gone as suddenly as she had come. No one followed her; the women were too frightened; the men laughed, and declared that it was not worth while. But when they had sufficiently recovered from their surprise to fall into an animated discussion upon her and her rude rhymes, they heard her voice again, singing hoarsely in the distance-- "Together they'll float down the rushing river; In Heaven be one for ever and ever."