It was now the very witching time of night, when they heard
a voice shouting, "Over!" They paused to listen, and the voice
repeated "Over!" in accents clear and loud, but which at
the same time either were in themselves, or seemed to be,
from the place and the hour, singularly plaintive and dreary.
The friar fidgetted about in his seat: fell into a deep musing:
shook himself, and looked about him: first at Marian, then at Robin,
then at Marian again; filled and tossed off a cup of canary,
and relapsed into his reverie.
"Will you not bring your passenger over?" said Robin. The friar
shook his head and looked mysterious.
"That passenger," said the friar, "will never come over.
Every full moon, at midnight, that voice calls, 'Over!' I and my
varlet have more than once obeyed the summons, and we have sometimes
had a glimpse of a white figure under the opposite trees:
but when the boat has touched the bank, nothing has been to be seen;
and the voice has been heard no more till the midnight of the
next full moon."
"It is very strange," said Robin.
"Wondrous strange," said the friar, looking solemn.
The voice again called "Over!" in a long plaintive musical cry.
"I must go to it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace.
I would all my customers were of this world. I begin to think
that I am Charon, and that this river is Styx.
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