Chapter 1

Blow, blow, thou wintry wind.--SHAKESPEARE.

Blow, breezes, blow.--MOORE.

A STORM.--A RUSTIC REPAST.--AN ALARM.--UNCOMMON READINESS IN A
CHILD.--AN INUNDATED STRANGER.--A CASTLE OUT OF REPAIR.--AN
IMPAIRED CHARACTER.

It was on a nocturnal night in autumnal October; the wet rain fell
in liquid quantities, and the thunder rolled in an awful and
Ossianly manner. The lowly, but peaceful inhabitants of a small,
but decent cottage, were just sitting down to their homely, but
wholesome supper, when a loud knocking at the door alarmed them.
Bertram armed himself with a ladle. 'Lackadaisy!' cried old
Margueritone, and little Billy seized the favourable moment to fill
his mouth with meat. Innocent fraud! happy childhood!

The father's lustre and the mother's bloom.--THOMPSON.

Bertram then opened the door; when lo! pale, breathless, dripping,
and with a look that would have shocked the Humane Society, a
beautiful female tottered into the room.

'Lackadaisy, Ma'am,' said Margueritone, 'are you wet?'

'Wet!' exclaimed the fair unknown, wringing a rivulet of rain from
the corner of her robe; 'O ye gods, wet!'

Margueritone felt the justice, the gentleness of the reproof, and
turned the subject, by recommending a glass of spirits.

Spirit of my sainted sire.

The stranger sipped, shook her head, and fainted. Her hair was long
and dark, and the bed was ready; so since she seems in distress, we
will leave her there awhile; lest we should betray an ignorance of
the world, in appearing not to know the proper time for deserting
people.

On the rocky summit of a beetling precipice, whose base was lashed
by the angry Atlantic, stood a moated, and turreted structure,
called Il Castello di Grimgothico.

As the northern tower had remained uninhabited since the death of
its late lord, Henriques De Violenci, lights and figures were,
_par consequence_, observed in it at midnight. Besides, the
black eyebrows of the present baron had a habit of meeting for
several years, and _quelquefois_, he paced the picture-gallery
with a hurried step. These circumstances combined, there could be
no doubt of his having committed murder. Accordingly, all avoided
him, except the Count Stiletto, and the hectic, but heavenly
Hysterica. The former, he knew, was the most pale-faced, flagitious
character in the world. But birds of a plume associate. The latter
shall be presented to the reader in the next chapter.