The storm continued to rage with unabated violence, and, after they had laid themselves down, they found that the castle was all tottering and quaking before it. The firmest heart was appalled; for the rocking of the castle was not all; every now and then they heard eldritch shrieks arising, as of some wretch perishing, or rather, as some of them thought, like the voices of angry spirits yelling through the tempest. When one of these howling sounds came on the blast, every one of our prostrate friends breathed a deep sigh, or uttered some exclamatory sound, Charlie had always one, which he uttered even after he was asleep. "Hech! Gude sauf us, sirs! what will be the upshot o' a' this?" The Master sat muffled up in the corner close behind them, and after he judged them all to be asleep he fell a-crooning a sort of hymn in an under key. The poet was, however, more than half awake, and gathered up some broken fragments of it. Poets are never to trust when they give quotations from memory out of the works of others; and perhaps honest Carol might add some bombastic lines of his own, but he always averred that the following lines formed a part of the warlock's hymn. "Pother, pother, My master and brother! Who may endure thee, Thus failing in fury? King of the tempest that travels the plain; King of the snow, and the hail, and the rain, Lend to thy lever yet seven times seven, Blow up the blue flame for bolt and for levin, The red forge of hell with the bellows of heaven! With hoop, and with hammer! With yell, and with yammer; Hold them at play, Till the dawn of the day! Pother! pother! My sovereign and brother! "O strain to thy lever, This world to sever In two or in three-- What joy it would be! What toiling, and moiling, and mighty commotions! What rending of hills, and what roaring of oceans! Ay, that is thy voice, I know it full well; And that is thy whistle's majestic swell; But why wilt thou ride thy furious race, Along the bounds of vacant space, While there is tongue of flesh to scream, And life to start, and blood to stream? Yet pother, pother! My sovereign and brother! And men shall see, ere the rising sun, What deeds thy mighty arm hath done."