It is the belief in those superstitious regions that infernal spirits sometimes appear among men to lead lives of crime and calamity. In common with other noted criminals, Hans of Iceland enjoyed this fearful renown. It was also believed that a woman, who by seduction or by violence, became the prey of one of these monsters in human form, by that misfortune was doomed to be his companion in hell. The events of which the hermit reminded the widow seemed to revive in her these thoughts. “Alas!” she sobbed, “then I cannot escape from this wretched existence! And what have I done? for you know, my beloved Carroll, I am innocent. A young girl’s arm is without strength to resist the arm of a demon.” She rambled on; her eyes were wild with delirium, and her incoherent words seemed born of the convulsive quiver of her lips. “Yes, Carroll, since that day, though polluted, I am innocent; and the demon asks me if I remember that horrible day! Carroll, I never deceived you; you came too late. I was his before I was yours, alas! Alas! and I must be forever punished. No, I can never rejoin you,--you for whom I weep. What would it avail me to die? I should follow this monster into a world as fearful as himself,--the world of the damned! And what have I done? Must my misfortunes in this life become my crimes in the next?” The little monk bent a look of triumph and command upon her face. “Ah!” she suddenly exclaimed, turning toward him; “ah, tell me, is not this some fearful dream induced by your presence? For you know but too well, alas! that since the day of my ruin, every night that I am visited by your fatal spirit is marked by foul apparitions, awful dreams, and frightful visions.” “Woman, woman, cease your raving; it is as true that you are wide awake as it is true that Gill is dead.” The memory of her past misfortunes had, as it were, blotted out all thought of her fresh grief; these words revived it. “Oh, my son! my son!” she moaned; and the tones of her voice would have moved any but the wicked being who heard it. “No, he will return; he is not dead; I cannot believe that he is dead.” “Well, go ask him of Roeraas rocks, which crushed out his life; of Throndhjem Fjord, which swallowed up his body.” The widow fell upon her knees, crying convulsively, “God! great God!” “Be silent, servant of hell!” The wretched woman was silent. He added: “Do not doubt your son’s death; he was punished for the sins of his father. He let his granite heart melt in the sunlight of a woman’s eyes. I possessed you, but I never loved you. Your Carroll’s misfortune was also his. My son and yours was deceived by his betrothed, by her for whom he died.”