They did not speak much, this young and dreaming pair, for their hearts were too full of tenderness and hope, desperate hope, that their love might be successful; and being loth to pain unnecessarily the heart of her lover, Sybilla, unlike the haughty Euphemia, did not confide to him the intentions of her father regarding that young noble whom he had sworn to make his son-in-law at all hazards; but with the superstition incident to her time, rather than to herself, she enumerated a number of omens of impending evil which now can only excite a smile--and Falconer smiled at them even then. Yesterday, when going to the chapel of the Grey Sisters in the Overgaitt, ahe had seen a single crow flying straight before her--an infallible omen of mischance; and this morning at sunrise, when watching the swans that swam on the river, one uttered a wild, wailing, and melodious sound, such as she had never heard before. She thought it was enchanted; but an hour after it was seen to float upon the water with outstretched wings, quite dead--another terrible omen! "The swan was dying, dearest Sybie, and was singing its own sweet dirge," replied Falconer; "but thou hast heard what few have the fortune to hear--though there is nothing wonderful in it. If Archy of Anster our wight boatswain were here, he could tell thee of stranger things; of an ocean where the fish turn all manner of beautiful colours before they die; of gigantic plants that flower but once in a hundred years, and happy is he who beholds them then; of islands where every tree utters a melodious sound when the soft wind sweeps through their fairy leaves, and of birds that live for six long centuries, and having no mate, burn themselves to death in a nest of spices, from whence a young one springs forth with all its plumage sprouting--the phoenix of Arabia! In the bosom of Nature, dearest, there is hidden many a secret of which we know nothing." "I have heard Father Zuill speak of such things to my sister Margaret," said Sybilla, weeping at her name. "Our chaplain--ah! he hopes one day to invent a mirror which will consume ships and cities, scorch forests to charcoal, and mountains to cinders, and put cannon and arquebusses quite out of fashion, like the mangonels and balistæ of the olden time. What would become of me then? I should have to learn some other trade than soldiering, or go to battle with a mirror on my back. It is the insanity of science." "Yet I have heard that your old Dominican is a famous preacher."