and sorrow that the new tenants might bring into the Hall. She made a low
courtesy; as much as to say, "Sir, I fall into your will and pleasure:"
but I saw in her eye that she had made up her mind to have to do with
things of fearful and portentous shape, and to hear many a midnight
wailing in the surrounding woods. I do not think that up to the day of
this old lady's death, which took place in her eighty-fourth year, she
ever looked with pleasure or contentment on the barn owl, as it flew round
the large sycamore trees which grow near the old ruined gateway.

(_To be concluded in our next_.)


[1] "Ill-omen'd in his form, the unlucky fowl,
Abhorr'd by men, and call'd a screeching owl."--_Garth's Trans._

[2] "They fly by night, and assail infants in the nurse's absence."

[3] "Even the ill-boding owl is declared a bird of good omen."

[4] "The Stygian owl gives sad omens in a thousand places."

[5] "A feather of the night owl."

[6] ----"And, on her palace top,
The lonely owl with oft repeated scream
Complains, and spins into a dismal length
Her baleful shrieks."--_Trapp's Trans._

[7] "And sell bodies torn from their tombs."