Your passage as to the changes in _Sister Helen_ could not well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye in the verses themselves. It is the _bride of Keith_ who is the last pleader--as vainly as the others, and with a yet more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also as regards their value to the ballad.... Don’t let the changes in _Helen_ get wind overmuch. I want them to be new when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting your epistles. The fresh stanzas in question, which had already obtained the suffrages of his brother, of Mr. Bell Scott, and other qualified critics, were subsequently sent to me. They are as follows. After Keith of Keith, the father of Sister Helen’s sometime lover, has pleaded for his son in vain, the last suppliant to arrive is his son’s bride: A lady here, by a dark steed brought, Sister Helen, So darkly clad I saw her not. “See her now or never see aught, Little brother!” (_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Whit more to see, between Hell and Heaven?_) “Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair, Sister Helen, On the Lady of Ewern’s golden hair.” “Blest hour of my power and her despair, Little brother!” (O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blest and bann’d, between Hell and Heaven!) “Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, ‘Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.” “One morn for pride and three days for woe, Little brother!” (O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!) “Her clasp’d hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind’s wail her sobs are wed.” “What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?” (O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death’s, between Hell and Heaven?) “She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,-- She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.” “Oh! might I but hear her soul’s blithe tune, Little brother!” (O Mother, Mary Mother, Her woe’s dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)