Poor girl! in one moment passion and pride had flown;
she lay senseless, blood streaming from the wound.
A quick revulsion of feeling swept through the impressionable people.
Her departure had been watched, the fall observed, and the serious
nature of the accident was soon known; all hurried to the spot where she
lay, full of sympathy and distress. Jean, perhaps not altogether
unremorseful, was among the first to proffer aid; the stranger, left
alone, took off the wreath and placed it on one of the stones of the
circle, by which she stood contemplating the scene.
The blow, struck deep into the temple, was beyond any ordinary means of
cure; life indeed seemed to be ebbing away. "Send for Marie!" the cry
sprang from many mouths: "send for Marie the wise woman! she alone can
save her!" Three or four youths ran hastily off.
"Wish ye for Marie Torode's body or her spirit?" said a harsh female
voice; "her body ye can have! but what avail closed eyes and rigid
limbs? Her spirit, tossed by the whirling death-blast, is beyond your
reach!"
The speaker, on whom all eyes turned, was an aged woman of unusual
height; her snow-white hair was confined by a metal circlet, her eyes
were keen and searching, her gestures imperious; her dress was simple
and would have been rude but for the quaintly ornamented silver girdle
that bound her waist, and the massive bracelets on her arms.
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