Another drop, and Alizon was on her feet, gazing at her in astonishment, and laughing wildly as herself.
Poor girls! how wild and strange they looked--and how unlike themselves! "Whither are you going ?" cried Alizon.
"To the moon! to the stars!--any where!" rejoined Dorothy, with a laugh of frantic glee.
"I will go with you," cried Alizon, echoing the laugh.
"Here and there!--here and there!" exclaimed Dorothy, taking her hand.
"Emen hetan! Emen hetan!" As the mystic words were uttered they started away.

It seemed as if no impediments could stop them; how they crossed the closet, passed through a sliding panel into the abbot's room, entered the oratory, and from it descended, by a secret staircase, to the garden, they knew not--but there they were, gliding swiftly along in the moonlight, like winged spirits.

What took them towards the conventual church they could not say.

But they were drawn thither, as the ship was irresistibly dragged towards the loadstone rock described in the Eastern legend.

Nothing surprised them then, or they might have been struck by the dense vapour, enveloping the monastic ruins, and shrouding them from view; nor was it until they entered the desecrated fabric, that any consciousness of what was passing around returned to them.
Their ears were then assailed by a wild hubbub of discordant sounds, hootings and croakings as of owls and ravens, shrieks and jarring cries as of night-birds, bellowings as of cattle, groans and dismal sounds, mixed with unearthly laughter.