counted it as joy to share his hardships and perils. While upon the
journey she had undertaken, she chanced to enter in his company, in
order to pass the night, a dwelling, the funeral of whose dead master
was being conducted with melancholy rites. Here, desiring to pry into
the purposes of heaven by the help of a magical espial, she graved on
wood some very dreadful spells, and caused Hadding to put them under the
dead man's tongue; thus forcing him to utter, with the voice so given, a
strain terrible to hear:

"Perish accursed he who hath dragged me back from those below, let him
be punished for calling a spirit out of bale!

"Whoso hath called me, who am lifeless and dead, back from the abode
below, and hath brought me again into upper air, let him pay full
penalty with his own death in the dreary shades beneath livid Styx.
Behold, counter to my will and purpose, I must declare some bitter
tidings. For as ye go away from this house ye will come to the narrow
path of a grove, and will be a prey to demons all about. Then she who
hath brought our death back from out of void, and has given us a sight
of this light once more, by her prayers wondrously drawing forth the
ghost and casting it into the bonds of the body, shall bitterly bewail
her rash enterprise.

"Perish accursed he who hath dragged me back from those below, let him
be punished for calling a spirit out of bale!

"For when the black pestilence of the blast that engenders monsters has
crushed out the inmost entrails with stern effort, and when their hand
has swept away the living with cruel nail, tearing off limbs and rending
ravished bodies; then Hadding, thy life shall survive, nor shall the