University of Virginia Library

BOOK THE FOURTH.
The Grabe.
The Fate and the Doom Unite and the Cloud Bursts.

1. CHAPTER THE FIRST.
A SILVERY MOON AND A CLOUDLESS
SKY.

“Night among the mountains—oh, glorious
and beautiful!” arose the voice of the Wanderer,
as with one bold grasp he attained the topmost
rock of the hoary steep, rising far above forest and
stream—“Night among the mountains—the calm
moonbeams sleeping on the lake—the boundless
azure arching above—the rolling sweep of forest
and the rugged outline of precipice and steep—
the far-off convent, its towers looming thro' the
distance, like a cloud of evil omen—Night among
the mountains, glorious and grand and beautiful!

“Thank God for the breeze, the cool and freshning
breeze! It sweeps over my forehead, burning
as with the ravages of hidden flame, it bears the
fever from my cheek, and the madness from my
brain. And yet I must on, and on—afar I behold
the peaceful cot, appearing amid the luxuriance
of the hill-side vines—my steed lays bleeding
and dead in the vale below, still must I on,
and on!

“God of Heaven, will that face never depart
from my soul, the brow darkened by superhuman
hate, the eyes all aflame with the Curse of the
Fratricide, the white lips, and the sunken jaw;
with the blood oozing from every pore! Even now
I behold the face! And to her ear—help me
Saints of Light—to her ear must I bear the manner
of his doom!

“The moon shines in the heavens, calm and
beautiful—when the mild radiance of her beams
pales before the glory of the uprising sun—then,
then, will the angels of fate, write in the books
of the Unknown, the Doom of Adrian, the last of
the race of Albarone!”

And as the words broke murmuring from his
lips, he flung his form from the summit of
the steep, and grasping with eager hands the
point of each projecting rock, at last descended
to the bed of the valley, and sped onward on his
errand of woe, while higher in the heavens up
rose the moon.

High in the heavens arose the full orbed moon,
and calm and lovely was the sight, as enthroned
in the very zenith of the boundless azure, this
thing of beauty and of beams, shed a shower of
silver radiance down on the silent bosom of the
quiet vale, mirroring her rounded glory, in the
deep waters of the mountain lake, giving a ghastly
lustre to the white precipice, from whose foundations
arose the walls of the lonely convent, mossy
with age and darkened by time.

In this wide world of ours—so runs the wild
rhapsody of the Chronicler of the ancient MSS.—
in this wide world of ours,there are, I ween, many
things sublime and beautiful and grand, yet what
sight may compare with a cloudless heaven, a
silvery moon and a lovely extent of woody hills
and grassy vales? Never minstrel struck harp—
never romancer spoke the fancies of his brain,
that did not hymn thy praise, O! beauteous thing
of brilliance and of beams! For ages and for
ages thou hast held thy way of glory thro' the
arching heavens—thou hast looked down upon
warriors marching in all their pomp, and thou
hast beheld their withered forms strewn over the
battle plain;—lovers have poured forth their love
beneath thy light, and again thou hast looked
down upon their quiet graves;—nations have risen
and fallen;—monuments that gave promise of
eternal duration, have crumbled in the dust;—
cities have towered in deserts, and deserts have
won the place of gorgeous cities, yet still kind
nurturer of holy thoughts, inspirer of heavenly
fancies, yet still thou passest on in thy course of
light, and thus, with brilliance unpaling and unpaled,
glorious as when God first bade thee roll
thro' the azure expanse, shalt thou urge thy way
until the final trump of doom.

Arising in the calm moonbeams, the roof of the
lonely cottage gave its wreathing vines, all gay
with flowers, to the waving motion of the night
air, while the gleam of a taper, shooting from a
crevice of the closed lattice, varied the shadows
flung along one side of the tenement, by a glittering
thread of light.

Meanwhile the beams of the taper gave light to
the principal chamber of the cottage, where the
stately mother of Leoné the student, sate wrapt
in deep meditation.

“Strange!”—thus she murmured—“Strange!
Scarce seven days since we first concealed ourselves
in this lonely vale, and Adrian—ha! I may
be overheard—Leoné, has won the friendship of
this noble youth of Florence. Not that he acquires
honor thereby—by my troth, no!—the
youth is a good youth, and a fair, but the friendship
of Emperors cannot add glory to the heir of
Albarone—fool that I am!—ever repeating the
name of our race! Strange it is, very strange,
that the gentle Florian should take up his abode,
in our cot! He is ever with Leone!—They walk,
they eat, they drink together, and together they
pursue their studies! The fair stranger shall in
time become the leader of armies—but my son—
the last of an honored race, shall become a—monk.
The thought is maddening!”

The dame arose and hurriedly paced the room.
As she strode to and fro she perceived the door
of Leoné's apartment slightly ajar, and impelled
by mere restlessness, she took a mother's privilege,
and softly entered the room.

No sooner had she opened the door, than a
sight met her gaze, that caused her to start back
to the very threshold with astonishment.

Seated beside the table, on which a taper cast
its dim light, over the opened volume, the chairs
of the students were drawn close together, their
backs were turned to the dame, the arm of Leoné
was around the slender waist of the gentle Florian,
and with their heads laid one against the other,
the rich golden locks of Leoné mingled with a
shower of flaxen tresses that fell over the shoulders
and down the back of the fair stranger.

Treading on tip-toe and much wondering at
the unusual length of Florian's hair, the dame approached.

“Thou art weary, my love”—the whisper
broke from Florian's lips—thy dress is soiled with
dust and torn by travel—thy face is wan and
haggard, and—the Virgin save me—thine eyes
are bloodshot! Thou hast been absent two long
and weary days. Hast journeyed far to-day Adrian?”

“A score of miles, since the sunset hour.”

“And thou didst see the old castle yet again?”

Adrian replied in a whisper, and then as they
conversed in low murmurs, the dame observed the
form of her son agitated by a slight trembling motion,
while ever and anon he turned his head
aside veiling his face in his hands.

Nearer drew the dame, and looking over the
heads of the students, a tremor of surprise ran
over her frame, her hands were involuntarily raised,
her thin lips parted, her grey eyes expanded,
and her eyebrows arose to the very roots of her
hair. Silent she stood and motionless as a statue.

The evening being somewhat warm, the broach
that fastened Florian's doublet at the neck, was
unloosed and the opening garment gave to view a
neck of the most surpassing whiteness, spreading
into shoulders of flowing outline, budding into a
bosom of virgin tracery of form, all glowing with
the warm blood of youth, and heaving with the
pulsations of passion.

2. CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE CLOUD GATHERS AND THE SKY
DARKENS.

The dame essayed to speak. Her voice died
away in an unmeaning rattle of the throat. One
hand she extended, and seizing Leoné by the
shoulder, with the other she tore the maiden from
his embrace—

“Apostate!” she began in tones that trembled
with rage, “is it thus thou honorest the race whose
name thou bearest. Away!—I will never look
upon thee more! Away!—and with thee take
thy —, I will not speak the title of shame;—
Away!”

As she spoke she raised her hand to strike the
shrinking maiden, who, with head drooped on her
bosom, and quick blushes coursing over her face,
strove hurriedly to fasten the broach of her doublet.

“Strike her not, mother!” cried Leoné, throwing
himself before the damsel, “Assail her not
with words of shame!”

He took the hand of the blushing maiden and
continued—“Fear not, love, there is none to harm
thee. Mother, behold my bride!”

“Annabel!—Thy bride? Wherefore this concealment?
Why this unmaidenly disguise? How
is't, my son—how is't?”

“As for the disguise it was assumed to aid her
escape, and then,”—he whispered into his mother's
ear—“and then I thought thou wouldst not
affect the niece of the—the—s'life, mother, I cannot
speak the word of any one connected with
Annabel!”

“My son, my son! what hast thou done? Answer
me—befits such doings with thy profession?
Art thou not intended for a minister of Heaven?”

While the dame spoke, the figure of a monk
darkened the opened doorway, advancing to
Leoné he threw back his cowl, and discovered the
dark brow, the wan face, the flashing eyes of
Albertine, the monk.

“Lord Adrian,” whispered the Monk, “at
the hour of sunset, when the dark storm arose,
howling its requiem over the remains of the Fratricide,
thou didst hasten from the castle of Albarone,
bound for this lovely valley. Thou hadst
not gone an hour's journey from the castle walls,
when I tracked thy footsteps, bearing news of
fearful import. Thy haunt hath been betrayed to
the tyrant, by a traitor from the lonely vally.
Even now, the Duke spurs his steed toward the
valley of the mountain lake, attended by a band
of minions; even now the voices of his bravoes,
startle the air, shrieking for thy blood!”

“And the Invisible?” whispered Adrian—
“where is their dagger of vengeance, while the
tyrant rides abroad on his errands of wrong?”

“Listen, Lord Adrian! This very night, while
the Duke is absent from the walls of Florence
will Lord and Monk, Prince and Peasant, joined
in the solemn oath of the holy steel, arise in the
might of men who have sworn at the very Altar
of God to be free, and ere the morrow's sun,
Florence the Fair and Beautiful, will own another
Sovereign! The Invisible work in secret, as doth
the hidden earthquake—man alone beholds the
bursting of the storm!”

“Hark! I hear the sound of horses' hoofs, mingled
with the clatter of arms!”

“God of Heaven! The Duke approaches!”
shouted the Monk—“I must be gone—all thought
of escape for thee and thy bride is vain! Adrian,
Adrian, bear a firm heart through the perils of
this night, and in the morrow's dawn will blaze
the star of thy Mighty Fortune! Hath the Duke
any issue, or is he the last of his line?”

“He is the last of his race,” answered Adrian,
“why dost thou ask?”

“Thou wilt learn anon!” exclaimed the Monk.

He turned and sought the door, but as if struck
by a sudden thought, he again approached Adrian,
and whispered in tones that seemed to come from
his very soul —`Fare-thee-well, Adrian, fare-thee-well!
I have loved thee much, very much;
There was a time when my heart was as young
as thine, my soul as pure. But now—Ha! now
I would have my revenge, although the chasm of
hell yawned beneath me—nay, although between
me and the object of my hate yawned the gulf of
perdition, I would leap the abyss and drag him
down, down to the eternal flames that now hunger
for his accursed soul—Fare-thee-well, Adrian
—I'll never see thee more!”

The Monk was gone. The fearful look that
fired his countenance, and the awful tones in
which he spoke, haunted Adrian Di Albarone until
his dying hour.

Scarcely had Albertine disappeared, when there
was the sound of trampling feet in the outer

apartment, and presently the figure of his Grace
of Florence occupied the doorway, while the heads
of his followers were seen looking over his shoulders.

He looked around the apartment with a curious
eye, as if he sought the wanderers. At last his
glance rested upon the form of the disguised Annabel,
and advancing toward the damsel, he
flung himself at her feet, exclaiming with all the
grace of attitude and expression at his command,

“Fair Ladye, it is with joy beyond the power
of words to tell, that I hail thee by the title of the
—Fair Ladye Annabel, Countess Di Albarone!”

“How sayst thou?” exclaimed Annabel, forgetting
her boyish disguise in her eagerness, “how
sayst thou? Me Ladye of Albarone?”

“Aye, fair Ladye. Thou art now the Courtess
Di Albarone, soon shalt thou be my own
loved Annabel, Duchess of Florence.”

The Duke leaned earnestly forward, trying to
look as much like a lover as might be—his face
wore an expression of deep solemnity, his protruding
eyes made an effort to sparkle, and his
attempt to soften his voice, gave one the idea of
a magpie trying to sing.

Annabel cast an agonized look at the Duke—

“Sayst thou nought of my father?” she exclaimed.
“Is he sick?—is he ill?—Tell me that
I may hurry to him!—For heaven's sake tell me!
—my father is—”

“Dead!” cried the Duke.

“Dead!” echoed the dame, starting with surprise.

Annabel heard no more.

“Coward and tyrant,” shouted Lord Adrian,
as he caught the sinking maiden in his arms,
“away with thee from this humble tenement.
Defile not my bride with the pollution of thy touch
—God of Heaven I would give the brightest
jewel in the coronet of Albarone, for one good
blow at the carcase of this craven hound!”

“Ho! art thou here my gay springald?—Thy
bride, indeed?—Guards advance, seize the miscreant!—I
will teach him to raise his unholy
hand against his liege Lord!—away with him to
the lowest dungeon of yon convent. On the morrow
he shall be carried to Florence, there to answer
for his treason!”

Unarmed and weaponless Adrian beheld himself
at the mercy of the tyrant. The soldiers ad
vanced,—in vain was his defence—in an instant
he found himself in the hands of his foes, and as
the minions bound his hands behind his back, he
heard the beetle-browed Balvardo—for he was
among the throng—whisper in the ear of the
Duke—

“At what hour my Lord?”

“'Slife canst not do it without my bidding?—
When all in the convent is still—at midnight
let it be done!—See to't!”

“Aye, aye, my Lord, at midnight it shall be
done!”

“And the Bridal,” cried the Duke, turning to
the Ladye Annabel, as she rested in the arms of
the Countess. “The hour after midnight shall
witness the joyous scene—the marriage of the
Duke and his betrothed!”

3. CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE DEATH-BOWL.

THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE RAVISHER STARTLE,
THE SILENCE OF THE MAIDEN'S CELL,
WHILE ADRIAN PREPARES
FOR HIS DOOM IN THE
VAULTS BELOW.

It was in a lone chamber, where the dark walls
arching above and circling around, unrelieved by
tapestry or wainscotting, were rendered yet more
dark and gloomy by the fitful flashes of a taper,
placed upon a small table of blackened oak, while
the sable hangings of the couch standing in one
corner, the floor of stone, wearing the same dead
and fearful hue, the massive furniture of the room,
and the grotesque carvings ornamenting the heavy
pillars, all were in unison with the grave-like
silence of the air, heavy with doom and burdened
with death.

In the centre of the apartment, her white walls
loosely flowing around her peerless form, with
her fair and rounded arms upraised, her head
slightly inclined to one side, her cheek, now warm
with hope, now pale with fear, stood the Ladye
Annabel; her hair of sunshine richness swept back
over her neck and shoulders, while her bosom rose
heaving in the light, and her breath came thick
and fast, the convulsive gasps, breaking the death-like
silence of the apartment, with an echo of
strange emphasis.

Sleep had fled from her eyelids. She arose and
watched, she knew not why, but still she watched
and trembled as she listened to the slightest
sound.

“I listen, I tremble, and my heart is chilled
with a nameless fear,” murmured the Ladye
Annabel, pacing the dark floor of the apartment
with indecisive and hurried steps. “The hour
wears slowly on, the fatal hour after midnight,
when this unrelenting Duke will claim my hand,
this hand already given to another, by the minister
of Heaven! Great God, behold the bridal—
a lonely cell, hidden in the depths of this fearful
monastery, the altar of black, the dark-robed
monk, the tyrant-Duke and the victim; the time,
the hour after the bell has tolled midnight, no
hope, no aid, afar from human consolation, or the
voice of human friend—such will be the second
bridal of Annabel, wife of Adrian Di Albarone!”

She paused with an inward thrill of fear, as the
vivid details of the picture rose before her mental
vision, and then came another thought of horror
—the bride must be widowed ere she weds a second
time.

While dark and fearful imaginings haunted her
soul, and well nigh crazed her brain, the fair and
gentle Ladye Annabel felt a strange and deadening
sleep stealing over her frame, and with a half-muttered
prayer to the Virgin, she sank slumbering
on the couch, the hangings of sable closing
over her form, and concealing her from the sight.

All is silent within the cell. Low, suppressed
sounds break from distant parts of the monastery,
half-heard shrieks, and deep-muttered groans. For
a dreary half hour, the cell is left to silence and
solitude; when a distant footstep is heard, then a
strange echo runs along the corridors of the Convent,
and the small door of the lonely room, grating
on its hinges slowly opens, and a Figure,
buried in the folds of a sweeping robe of black,
and bearing a small lamp of iron in an extended
hand, stalks cautiously along the floor of stone.

The Figure paused with a trembling and indicisive
movement in the centre of the floor, and
then a face flushed by wine, and ruddy with excitement,
was thrust from the folds of the robe of
black.

“All silent and still,” exclaimed a voice, indistinct
with wine. “An half hour of midnight—the
sleeping potion has taken effect! It has, by St.,
Antonia!”

He approached the bedside, and with the trembling
hand of a coward, flung beck the sable hangings
of the couch. The light of his lamp, fell
vividly over the form of the sleeping maiden, as
she reclined on the sable furs covering the couch,
while her flowing robes, white as the undriven
snow, gave a strange contrast to the ebony darkness
of the bed.

“I' faith she is beautiful—eh, Aldarin? Faugh!
I forgot—the man is dead! That bloom upon her
cheek—'tis like the opening rose. How soft that
heave of the bosom as it rises from the folds of the
white robe—torn to pieces by wild horses—that
arm, with the dress falling softly around its out-lines,
the small hand, the tapering fingers—a most
accursed fate—and the attitude, the cheek reclining
on the arm, the form laid so carelessly along
the couch, the feet, small, delicate—torn into a
thousand fragments, an arm here, a leg there, and
—By the Saints I must e'en crave a kiss of this
sleeping beauty”—

And stooping slowly over the bed, with the
lamp extended in one hand, the Duke glanced
nervously around the room, and then with a rude
grasp of the flaxen tresses, he wound the other
around the maiden's neck, his unholy hands touched
her virgin bosom with its globes of beauty,
heaving and throbbing as his fingers pressed the
snow-white skin, while his sensual lips, steaming
with wine, were pressed upon her unstained
cheek, his grasp growing closer, and his eyes
gloating over the Ladye's face and form, as that
kiss of pollution rested on her cheek.

“Ha—ha!—the sleeping potion,—she is mine
—she is mine. The braggart Adrian hugs his
death in the vaults below—I gather his bride to
my arm in the cell above. Ha—ha—the sleeping
potion!”

No thought of mercy, no whispering of pity, no
silent pleading of right, for a moment restrained
the purpose of the ravisher. He gathered her
form closer to that breast which had never been
the home of one ennobling thought, he wound his
hand around her neck; again was her bosom
and cheek polluted by the plague-spot of his touch.

“She is mine!” chuckled the ravisher. “Mine,
and none other than mine!”

The Ladye Annabel murmured in that fatal
sleep, she tossed her rounded arms wildly to and
fro; the potion was in her veins, and around her
heart, and the nightmare on her soul.

Another start, and she awoke. She slowly unclosed
her large blue eyes, she fixed their glance
upon the flushed countenance of the ravisher,

with a look that went to his very soul, and caused
the arm that encircled her form to tremble like a
leaf tossed to and fro by the wind.

“Murderer!” The solitary word broke from
her lips, and her look of meaning was again fixed
upon his face. He trembled before her glance—
he quailed like a whipped hound—he unloosed his
hold.

“I am not,” he muttered, springing backward
from the couch. “It was not me. He is not
dead; he lives—”

“Murderer!” she again murmured, in that
low, deep-toned voice, while her face of calm and
dreamy beauty was stamped with a weird expression
that awed the ravisher to the very soul.
“Even now thy evil angel writes thee liar, in the
book of thy misdeeds. Even now thy victim
writhes in the throes of death within the vaults
below; aye, aye, beneath thy very feet he dies.
Why stand ye over the corse? Doth not the pale
face and the cold brow fright ye? On whom is
fixed the glare of those stony eyes—on whom?
On thee, murderer, on thee; on thee they glare
with the accusing glance of death!”

“She is crazed! Save me, all good saints—
she is crazed! She sweeps toward me with a
measured stride! Great God! she walks not—
she glides slowly on; she moves like a spirit—
a thing of air!”

He shrunk back, cringing before the glance of
those eyes from which all reason had fled; he
shrunk back step by step as she advanced, awed
by the upraised arms, with the robes of white
waving slowly to and fro; awed by the supernatural
look visible in every line of the face of the
Ladye Annabel, and in a moment found himself
leaning for support against a dark stone pillar of
the cell.

“Murderer!” she murmured, looking him full
in the face. “I hear thy victim groan, I hear
him writhe. Look ye, good angels, he denies it,
and look, look how the red blood drops from his
trembling hands!”

With a look of wild and prophetic meaning, she
glided backward step by step, she reached the
small door of the cell, and flung it open with her
outspread hands.

“He denies it, he denies it; and the blood—ha
ha, ha!—hark how it patters on the floor!”

With that low, muttered laugh which chilled
his very blood, for it was the laugh of madness,
the Ladye Annabel again awed the Duke of Flo
rence—the ravisher in heart—with her gaze, and
then springing through the cell door, her form,
with its waving robes of snow, was lost to his
sight.

He saw her form no more, but a low muttered
laugh came whispering along the galleries of the
monastery, and half-formed words broke on his
ear. Where is now the ravisher, flushed with
wine and maddened with lust; where is now the
proud Duke, haughtily attired in robes of price,
with dishonor on his heart, and the foul purpose
on his soul?

Crouching against the wall, trembling in every
limb, his eyes vacant with terror, his whiskered
jaw half dropped upon his heart, his hand still
nervously grasping the iron lamp, he listens to the
low, muttered laugh creeping to his ear from the
far distant corridors; he listens and shakes with
fear, but says no word.

Along the dark galleries she flees, filling the
old arches with echoes of that low muttered laugh;
through the midnight passages she winds, stair-ways
she ascends, and her delicate feet descend
the dampened steps of stone; alone, in darkness,
and in nameless fear, she glides on her flight of
terror.

The cool air sweeps over her fevered brow, the
dampness of the atmosphere chills her bosom, and
by slow degrees the flight of madness, caused by
the drugged potion, passed from her soul, and the
Ladye Annabel is restored to reason and to
thought.

Oh! fearful reason, oh! terrible thought, to
which madness were joy, insanity, in its wildest
flight, happiness the most intense.

“The bride must be widowed, ere she weds a
second time!”

She rushed on, never heeding the darkness;
she rushed on, never heeding the cold. She might
save him yet; oh! even yet she might save him.
And through the dark passages of that strange
and deserted part of the monastery she wound,
until her hands, extended on either side, touched
the opposite walls, wet with moisture, and crawling
with vermin; when the echo of the arches,
superseded by a dead, deafening murmur, told
Annabel that she strode along a confined corridor,
far under ground, growing narrow and yet narrower
at every step.

A moment passed, and her extended hands
were met by waving folds of tapestry, that swept
across her path, and terminated the narrow corr

dor. Thrusting her hands eagerly among the
hangings, she turned them suddenly aside, and
started back with surprise, as a broad belt of light
was thrown along the gloomy passage. With
hushed breath and a beating heart, she gazed beyond
the hangings of dark leather, and while her
blue eyes dilated with wonder and fear, she beheld
a strange and startling scene.

Two figures were kneeling upon the floor of a
small apartment, narrow and confined, as regards
dimensions, and square in shape, hung with gorgeous
folds of embroidered tapestry, dark-green
in hue, with matting of strange pattern and curious
device, brought from the far Eastern lands,
strewn over the pavement of the room; while the
only object that broke the uniformity of the place,
was a dark robe flung over some massive body in
an obscure corner.

The light, clear and brilliant in its flame, placed
on the matting between the kneeling men, threw
its vivid beams on each face and form, over every
line of their features, over every point of their apparel.

The Ladye Annabel stifled an expression of
surprise which rose to her lips at the vision of this
luxuriously furnished cell, in the midst of gloom
and damp, and then with a beating heart took in
the details of this strange picture.

One of the kneeling figures was a soldier, the
other was a monk. The soldier, with his muscular
hand laid on his bent knee, grasped a massive
sword, his beetle brow surmounted by stiff and
matted hair, giving a darker expression to his
small and ferret-like eyes; while his companion,
robed in the dark attire of a monk, with a pale,
solemn face, lighted by the glare of an eye that
seemed to dilate and burn, looked upon the man-at-arms
with a glance meant to read more than
the rugged visage—meant to read his very soul.

The Ladye Annabel listened to their low and
muttered conversation with her very heart mounting
to her throat.

“Thou wilt do it—eh, Albertine? Thou knowest
my orders, sir monk?”

“The steel or the bowl?”

“The same, by the fiend! The hour—when
the clock of the tower strikes twelve. He said so
—thou knowest whom I mean. Why that dark
and bitter smile? Blood o' th' Turk, monk, that
smile shows thy white teeth—I like it not!”

“Nay, good Balvardo, be not angered with me.
I was but painting a quiet picture to my fancy.
Our victim, his eyes rolling in the death-struggle,
his blue lips whitened with foam, his arms outstretched
with the last convulsive spasm, and then
—ha, ha!—the music of the death rattle! 'Tis
excellent, i'faith, the picture—ha, ha ha!”

“Look ye, monk or devil, whate'er ye be, I'm
your man, when a good deed of cut-and-thrust is
to be done, and the wretch is despatched with a
blow. But as for this merry-making over the
dead, I like it not. Blood o' Mahound, not a whit
of it! I can wet my sword in a man's blood as
nicely as your next man, but it likes me not to
wet my tusks with the vile puddle, and grin while
the red drops fall from my lips. No more o' your
death grins, monk, or—'s death!—we quarrel!”

“Ho—ho—ho! so the humor suits ye not, honest
Balvardo. Dost know the depth of the sea, or
the number of the millions slain by old Death?
Then know the hate I bear my victim; then count
the lives I would crush in my revenge, had he as
many as the millions trampled under the feet of
Death! Is't not cause former riment, good Balvardo?”

“Look ye, sir monk, thou hast ever been known
as the prime tool of his grace,—'s life! I should
mention no names,—and therefore do I resign my
part in this night's work to thy hands. When
'tis done, thou knowest—”

“Where shall I place the body?”

“Here!” cried the hoarse voice of the soldier,
and the Ladye Annabel saw him rise; she beheld
him striding across the matted floor, toward an
obscure corner of the apartment; she beheld him
as he placed his rough hand upon the dark robe
flung over the rising object. “Here let him
rest,” he cried, raising the robe, “and rest forever!”

The Ladye Annabel beheld a sight that gathered
the big beaded drops of sweat thick as the
death dew on her forehead. Her heart seemed
swelled to bursting, and she turned away from
the sight for a single moment, with the impulse
of overpowering horror.

When she looked again, the black cloth was
again resting on that object of terror, while Balvardo
was advancing toward the monk with his
usual heavy and measured stride.

“Hast aught to hold the wine, good Balvardo?”

“In yonder closet thou wilt find the wine. Here
is—curse this cloak, how its folds tangle about
my body!—here is the goblet.”

The Ladye Annabel felt the death-like feeling
of ice creeping around her heart; and as she looked,
she thought she beheld the monk Albertine

grow pale with horror, while his compressed lip
seemed to tell a story of fearful yet hushed emotion.

The goblet held forth in the hand of the Sworder,
was the goblet of gold with which the poisoner
of the Red Chamber had administered death to
the lips of Julian, Lord of Albarone.

“Man!” exclaimed Albertine, with a blazing
eye and livid lip, “how came this goblet—this
death-bowl—in thy possession?”

“'S life! Dost not know the story? One of
the witnesses who gave testimony against that—
that—I mean he who sleeps in yonder chamber—
received this goblet as a mark of the accuser's
gratitude. I was that witness. Blood o' th'
Turk! there goes the clock—one, two, three. Sir
monk to thy duty.”

“Great God of mercy, he is false at last!”

And as the words broke from the Ladye Annabel's
lips, she beheld the monk take the goblet in
his hands; she beheld him empty a paper filled
with white powder into its depths.

She could look no more; a cold, icy feeling
seemed to freeze the very blood around her heart;
her limbs refused their support; she sank slowly
down upon the damp floor, and yet the words
spoken in the adjoining room came to her ear like
the echo of far-off shouts.

“Four, five, six. Monk, wilt delay all night?
To thy victim!”

The monk strode across the cell, holding the
goblet under his robe; he approached a spot
where the tapestried hangings, slightly swept
aside, disclosed the entrance into another room.

“Adrian,” whispered the monk, “dost sleep?”

“Sleep!” echoed a hollow voice from the inner
cell. “Sleep, when there is fever in my brain,
and fire in my heart! Dost jest, good Albertine?”

“Nay, nay, Adrian, I jest not. I have a sleeping
potion which will give thee rest.”

“The rest of the grave, in the arms of the skeleton-god,”
muttered Balvardo, with a low chuckle.

“Would that thy potion could minister sleep
eternal,” spoke the hollow voice, and a hasty
footstep was heard. “And yet I would not die
yet—no, no! She still lives. I would not die,
save in her arms, and by her side!”

And as the voice sounded strange and hollow
through the cell, the tapestry rustled, and Adrian
Di Albarone stood before the monk. Adrian Di
Albarone it was, but the manly form was bent
with chains, the black velvet attire of the student
was soiled and torn; while the faded countenance,
the sunken cheek, the lips compressed, the hollow
eye sockets, and the quick and fiery eye, all
told a tale of the agony of years endured within
the compass of a single hour.

He stood before the monk, and his chains clanked
as he stood, while his wild eye drank in each
line of Albertine's visage.

“You spoke of a soothing potion, good Albertine.”

“Seven, eight, nine,” muttered Balvardo.

The monk spoke not a word; he strode to the
closet—he seized the flask of wine—he filled the
goblet to the brim.

“Drink, Adrian,” he cried, “drink, and be refreshed!”

Adrian raised the goblet to his mouth with his
chained right hand—he wet his lips with the ruddy
wine; and then, as if seized by some fearful
spell, he stood motionless as death, while his right
arm straightened slowly out from his body, with
the hand convulsively clutching the bowl of death.

“It is, it is!” he shricked. “It is the goblet of
the Red Chamber! God of Heaven, what means
this mystery? Speak, Albertine. Wouldst thou
betray me?”

“Ten!” meanwhile continued Balvardo, in
the background.

“Adrian!” cried the monk, starting back with
a solemn gesture, “I stand upon the verge of the
cliff of Time; beneath me roll the surges of that
shoreless ocean which men name Eternity!
Ere the morrow's dawn, I leap from the cliff;
the surges of that awful sea will bear me on—on
to the vast Unknown! Thinkest thou I would
betray thee? Drink, and be refreshed.”

“Eleven, twelve! the time is up!” soliloquized
the sworder.

“I drink,” cried Adrian, with a wild gesture,
“I drink; for thy words are truth, and thine eye
bears no falsehood in its glance! I drink the goblet
of the Red Chamber to the dregs!”

A shriek that might never be forgotten rang
through the corridor and chamber, and a slight
form, arrayed in robes of white came rushing
from the folds of the tapestry, and Adrian beheld
the dreamy face of the Ladye Annabel, her cheek
pale as the robes she wore, while, with glaring
eye and voice of horror, she shrieked:

“Drink not—in God's name do not drink—the
bowl is drugged with death!”

He flung the bowl aside, but ere it left his hand

it was received in the quick grasp of the monk, he
raised his chained hands on high, and ere they
were lowered, his Bride lay panting on his breast!
Oh, where is the magic of human words that may
picture the deep and fearful interest of that meeting,
the gush of contending feelings, the rapture
sparkling in the eye and beaming from, the lip,
the heart all pulsation, the blood all fire, the arms
flung convulsively round each other's neck, the
look of the Doomed, the long, last, lingering look
upon the face of the beloved, her upturned eyes,
her cheek now crimson and now snow, her tresses
of gold waving over her robes of white, and her
form of beauty flung over his bosom with every
vein swelling with delight, every nerve quivering
with joy!

They meet as lovers meet, when standing on
the opposing rocks of Time and Destiny; they
fling their arms across the chasm, nor heed the
vast eternity that yawns below, ready to engulf
and destroy.

“Drink not, oh, Adrian, drink not—the bowl is
drugged with death!”

“The time is up,” muttered the hoarse voice of
Balvardo—“The guards are within call, good
monk an' he refuses the dose.”

“Adrian Di Albarone,” cried the monk, fixing
his full and solemn eyes upon the chained knight,
“drink the bowl, I implore thee! By the memory
of the Cell of the Doomed, by the memory of
the Chapel of the Rocks, by the memory of the
perils we have shared, the deaths we dared together,
in the name of thy father, whose ghost
now looks down upon thee, in His name, most
solemn and most dread, I adjure thee—drain the
goblet to the dregs!”

“Dark and mysterious man,” cried Adrian,
sharing the wild glance of Albertine, “give me
the bowl, I drink—”

“Adrian, for my sake touch it not—poison
nestles like a snake within its depths!”

“Hold me not, Annabel—grasp not my arm—”

“For the sake of God, oh do not, do not drink!”

“I must, I must! It is not thy hand, Albertine
that gives the bowl—it is the hand of Fate, thrust
from yon blackening cloud, which all my life has
thrown its shadow over my path! Give me the
bowl—though ten thousand deaths were darting
from each sparkle of the wine, still—I drink, and
drain the goblet to the dregs!”

In vain the upraised arm of the Ladye Annabel,
in vain her look of fear, her voice of horror! As
she clung to his chained arms, he raised the goblet
to his lips, he drained it to the dregs.

“He smiles,” muttered Balvardo, “the monk
smiles as he gives the death-bowl! I see not his
cloven foot, nor do I see his horns—not a whit o'
'em. Else might I suspect the devil were lurking
in yon monkish robe.”

Adrian handed the goblet to the monk. Albertine
received it with a deep and meaning
smile. Scarce had the hand of Adrian been extended
in the act, than his arm fell like a weight
of lead to his side, and Annabel felt her lover
leaning heavily upon her shoulder, while her fair
arms might scarce stay him in his fall to the
floor.

“Monk,” cried Adrian as sinking upon one knee
he fixed his ghastly eyes upon the face of Albertine;
“monk, I trusted thee, and thou art false!”

“His brow is cold,” murmured the Ladye Annabel,
as sinking on her knees by his side, she
supported Adrian's head upon her virgin bosom.
“See! the big drops of the death-dew stand out
from his forehead—and this, monk, this is thy
work!”

As the terrible look of the dying man met his
eye, Albertine seemed struggling with some terrible
inward pang, but when the words of Annabel
and her look of intense agony came like a death-bolt
to his heart, he hurriedly advanced, he looked
at the group, he spoke in a voice tremulous with
agitation yet deep and solemn in its every accent—

“Ye scorn me now, fair Ladye, and raise your
hands in a gesture of reproach most terrible to
bear; yet the day will come, when the voice of
scorn will be changed to the sound of pity, when
those very hands will strew fresh flowers over my
grave!”

“Has — given up its model of devils!” muttered
Balvardo, in the background. “'S life, I can murder
a man in hot blood or cold blood, but as for
this heaping taunt on taunt—I like it not—by the
Blood o' th' Turk!”

“He is dead—cold and dead,” murmured the
Ladye Annabel, as she gazed upon the pallid face
of Adrian. “He does not breathe; Mother of
Heaven, I cannot feel the beating of his heart!”

Ere the words had passed her lips, the dying
man sprang with one wild bound to his feet; and
while his bloodshot eyes rolled ghastily from face
to face, he flung his arms aloft, and tottered across
the chamber, laughing wildly and with maniac

glee, as he pointed to the dark object rising from
the floor, covered with the folds of the dark robe,
that swept over its surface like a pall of death.

“Monk, behold—behold the doom of Adrian of
Albarone!” he shouted, with a wild and husky
voice, as he stooped, with a sudden movement,
and tore the robe from the object which it concealed.
“There, there stands the assassin, here
the victim, and—ha, ha, ha!—behold the coffin!”

He swayed heavily from side to side; he flung
his arms hurriedly aloft in the vain effort to preserve
his balance, and then with a fixed and staring
eye, he gazed upon the face of Albertine with
a look that froze his blood.

“Monk, I trusted thee, and thou art false!”

The sound of a falling body echoed round the
room, and the lifeless form of Adrian Di Albarone
lay extended across the coffin, while the outspread
hands clutched the dark panels with the convulsive
grasp of death.

“Wait one hour,” muttered the monk to Balvardo;
“wait one hour, ere thou bearest the corse
to the grave. 'Tis now near the midnight hour:
an hour from this time, the Duke—ha, ha!—will
wed his bride; an hour from this time, and thou
mayst bear the corse to the grave!”

“Be it so,” growled Balvardo. “Then this
pestilent Adrian will trouble me no more! Blood
o' Mahound, the grave is a wondrous sure prison;
it needs nor bolt nor bar: old Death stands jailor
at its door!”

“Ladye!” cried the monk, as he advanced to
the side of the Ladye Annabel, raising the maiden,
whose senses seemed stupified with horror, from
the floor, “behold the corse of thy love! Advance,
ladye—rest thee by its side—gather the head of
the corse to thy bosom! Watch beside the corse
one hour—a single hour—and let nor man nor
devil wrest the lifeless body from thy grasp!”

The Ladye Annabel opened her large blue
eyes with a stare of vacant wander, and smiled as
she gathered the head of the corpse to her bosom,
twining her fair and delicate fingers in the golden
hair of the dead.

4. CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
THE CELL OF ST. ARELINE.

A lamp of iron, all rusted and time-eaten, suspended
from the arched ceiling of a small apart
ment of the convent of St. Benedict, reserved in
especial for strangers, threw a dim light over the
figure of his grace of Florence, reposing on a velvet
couch, and upon the blazing armor of the attending
men-at-arms, who waited beside their
lord.

A smile, full of self-satisfaction, rested upon the
lip of the Duke, and a glance full of agreeable
fancies lit up his eye, as he contemplated the fulfilment
of all his schemes.

“The forward boy punished for his insolence,”
—thus run his musings—“done to death for the
treasonable act of lifting his hand against his liege
lord—this accomplished, the fair Annabel is mine,
and with her I acquire the rich domains of Albarone.
A servitor but a moment since bears me
intelligence that she has recovered from her madness.
By'r Ladye, my exhausted coffers shall be
replenished to the brim! Ha—ha—ha! Then
I shall war and conquer. Why not I as well as
others of my rank and power? I shall war—I
shall conquer—I shall—”

“My Lord Duke,” exclaimed a sentinel, thrusting
his head from between the folds of a sable
curtain that hung across the apartment, dividing
it from an adjoining chamber, within whose walls
were the followers of his grace. “My Lord Duke,
a monk of the convent craves audience with your
grace—shall I admit him?”

“Aye, let him enter.”

And in a moment, there stood before the Duke
a monk attired in the dark robe of his order: his
hood was drawn over his face, and, with depressed
head and folded arms, he seemed to wait the
commands of his grace of Florence

“Thy errand, sir monk?”

“I come by the bidding of the Father Abbot,
to lead thee to the cell of the blessed St. Areline.”

“Ah! I remember me. As I dismounted at
the castle gate, the reverend abbot told me that it
had been a custom, from time past memory, for
all strangers visiting the holy house of St. Benedict,
to pass an hour in the cell of this saint—St.
Areline, methinks she is styled. Further, he told
me the saint has the power of revealing future
events. Is't so, holy father?”

“Even so, my Lord Duke. When besought,
on bended knee, in the silence of midnight, the
form of the blessed saint appears fired with supernatural

life: her eyes flash and her lips move,
and the doom of the suppliant—whether for good
or for evil—is revealed.”

“At midnight, say'st thou? 'Tis a lone hour.
By'r our Ladye, but the evil one may have something
to do with the matter.”

“That may not be, my Lord Duke. The holy
Areline died in the odour of sanctity. The scorner
and the outcast of heaven alone doubt her holiness
and power. For three centuries hath the
fame of St. Areline been sounded abroad, and now
it were sin unpardonable to say aught against her
sacred name.”

“Lead on, holy father; in God's name, lead
on: I'll follow thee. Hugo! I say, Hugo!”

The face of the ill-looking sentinel with the
squinting eye, appeared among the folds of the
sable curtain.

“Hugo, where is Balvardo, thy comrade—eh?
Speak quickly—where is Balvardo?”

The sinister eye of the sentinel squinted yet
more fearfully; he looked confusedly round, and
stammered forth:

“My Lord Duke, he is—he is—”

He paused suddenly, and finished the sentence
by pointing downward with the forefinger of the
right hand, with a sort of diving motion.

Ah! I had forgotten that, good Hugo! Thou
wilt attend me, vassals; and ye, sirs, shall also
accompany me to this midnight ceremony.”

While he thus spoke, the monk threw open a
door at the end of the apartment opposite the sable
curtain, and, followed by the Duke, attended
by Hugo and the two men-at-arms, with torches
in their hands, he presently was traversing a long
gallery, with his head still depressed and his arms
still folded on his breast.

“By'r our Lady, but thou art wondrous chary
of thy good looks!—eh, sir monk?”

“It becomes not a sinner like me to be otherwise
than humble. It becomes not a poor brother
of St. Benedict to assume an erect port and a bold
countenance before—his grace of Florence!”

“Well said, by my troth! Whither art leading
me, holy father? Ha! a stairway; it extends
above us as though it had no end. Ugh! how
those torches glare—how gloomy these arches
seem! Lead on, sir monk!”

Ascending the stairway, they found themselves
in a winding gallery, with floor of stone, low
arching roof, and narrow walls. Through the
mazes of this passage they swiftly wound, and
presently they stood at the foot of another stair-way.

“By St. Peter!” exclaimed the Duke, “but
these passages are like the windings of a witch's
den. How runs the night, holy father?”

“When I left the halls of the convent, the
sands of the hour glass had fallen to within an
half hour of midnight.”

“Ah! we shall be just in time for the trial of
St. Areline's power. Another gallery! By'r
Ladye, but this is wondrous! In the name of thy
patron, St. Benedict, I adjure thee, monk, tell me
are we not near our journey's end?”

“See'st thou yon oaken door that terminates
the gallery? The oaken door with large panels,
and topped by arches of dark stone? There, an
it please thee, my Lord Duke, must thou leave
thy attendants, and alone, and in the dark, we
shall enter the cell of the blessed St. Areline.”

“How? Leave my attendants? `Alone,' sayst
thou? `In the dark,'? Beshrew mete,h sir
monk, but this saint of thine is somewhat difficult
of audience!”

“The reward she offereth is beyond price. A
knowledge of the future—the dim and shadowy
future! Thou shalt behold thy coming deeds
written in characters of light; thy future conquests
shall spread themselves before thee like the
varying beauties of a lovely landscape. Thou
shalt—”

“'S life! thou talkest well! Enough: we
stand before the oaken door. Enter—I'll follow
thee!”

The monk passed his hand over one of the
panels of the huge door, and pressing a secret
spring, a narrow passage was opened, through
which the brother of St. Benedict disappeared,
followed by his grace of Florence.

“There they go,” Hugo exclaimed as the panel
closed. “There they go upon their madcap adventure.
The saints save me from all such folly!”

“And me, comrade,” cried the tallest of the
men-at-arms, letting the sheath of his sword fall
heavily upon the pavement of stone.

“I say amen to your prayers,” exclaimed the
other, looking very wise in the torchlight.

“Ha! what noise is that?” cried Hugo, as he
gave a sudden start.

“'Tis down in the court-yard,” exclaimed the
tall man-at-arms. Hark! 'tis the clashing of
swords—the rattling of spears—the clashing of
armour.”

“Shouts, too!” cried the other soldier, “Ha!
war cries! 'S life! it sounds as if they were
battering down the gates! Hark! again! and
again!”

And thus, while the sounds waxed louder, and
the cries grew fiercer in the court-yard below, the
men-at-arms, and their companion, Hugo, waited
with the utmost impatience the coming of their
lord. An hour passed. The Duke had not appeared.
The tall man-at-arms fixed his eyes upon
the massive door, and struck the secret panel with
his spear, urged by all the vigor of his stalwart
arm. Another and another blow. The wood
yielded, and the open space gave passage to the
man-at-arms, who forced his way through, followed
by his comrade and Hugo of the sinister eye.
Their torches flashed upon the walls of a square
apartment, with floor and roof of stone. No living
creature was there. A small, narrow door
gave entrance to another apartment. Three pillars
of time-worn stone supported the arched roof,
and divided the place into three sides, with floor
of variegated stone. One side of the apartment
was concealed by a curtain of sable velvet. This
Hugo hurriedly drew, and in an instant his ungainly
figure was reflected in a vast mirror of dazzling
steel, which, reaching to the arched ceiling
above, twice the height of a man, extended on either
side as wide as it was high. Around the
apartment was no sign of passage way or secret
door; all was bare and rugged stone, and the
place was without bench, stool, couch, or furniture
of any kind.

“By'r Ladye!” shouted Hugo, “that monk
was the—devil, and he has run away with our
lord! W-h-e-w!”

And the three fairly shook with mingled surprise
and terror, which was presently increased to
alarm and horror by the clashing of arms in the
outer apartment.

5. CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
THE WONDERS OF ST. ARELINE.

No sooner had the oaken panel closed behind
him, than the Duke found himself cautiously
groping his way in utter darkness, being guided
by the sound of the footsteps of the Monk.

Presently the Monk laid hand upon the Duke's
shoulder.

“Kneel, mortal, kneel,” he exclaimed in a
voice which the Duke thought wondrously changed
of a sudden, “kneel and behold the wonders
of St. Areline! Speak not upon the peril of thy
immortal soul!”

Upon the pavement of stone the Duke sank
down, and the Monk began to murmur certain
mysterious words, in a low, yet deep tone, and
thus he continued for the space of the fourth part
of an hour, when a light was seen dimly gleaming
at one end of the place, and presently another and
another, and gradually increasing in radiance they
soon appeared to the wondering eyes of the Duke,
dancing within the surface of a vast mirror of
dazzling steel. Strange it was that although the
meteors,—for such they seemed,—grew more brilliant
every moment, and shed a more intense
brightness along the surface of the mirror in
which they shone, yet not a ray of light escaped
to illumine the apartment, and the figures of the
Duke and the Monk were wrapt in mid-night
shadow.

And now soft clouds of feathery mist began
to roll within the surface of the mirror, and the
meteors gradually faded away into an universal
brightness, which like the mellow beams that herald
the coming day, poured a flood of rosy light
over the tumultuous chaos within the dazzling
steel.

“Behold!” cried the Monk, “behold the blessed
St. Areline!”

A dim and ghastly form arose from amid the
rolling clouds, far in the distance; nearer it drew
and nearer, and presently the outlines of a nun,
attired in the solemn hood, and sweeping robes of
white, became clear and perceptible. Advancing
to the front of the mirror with a gliding motion,
the hands of the spectre were folded upon its
breast, and the hood of white, hung drooping
over its face.

The Duke trembled with terror, and his brow
was wet with large drops of moisture that oozed
from his shivering skin.

“Mortal!” exclaimed a voice, soft as the tones
of a spirit of light,—“mortal, what wouldst thou
know?” The voice came from the shrouded face
of the spectre.

With tremulous voice, and as if urged by some
invisible power, the Duke shrieked forth—

“I would know my doom—I would know my
fate!”

The hood fell back from the head of the Spectre,
and its arms slowly extended!

“O Jesu!” shrieked the Duke,—“Look, look!
the skeleton hands, the fleshless skull, the hollow
eyes! One hand grasps a cross, and one a
grinning skull.—Look, look!”

“Speak not!” whispered the Monk, “speak
not upon pain of eternal doom!”

The voice again sounded through the cell.

“Dost thou seek in the name of the Holy One?
Dost thou ask trusting in his Saints?”

“I do!”

“Thou art answered!” and the bare and hideous
bones of the spectre head were covered,
quick as a flash of light, with ruddy and healthy
flesh, the hollow sockets gleamed with dark and
brilliant orbs, and the skeleton hands glowed with
life, as skin of rosy loveliness shrouded the disjointed
bones.

“Thou art answered!” and as the spectre
whispered the words, a skeleton form came gliding
along the mirror, holding an hour-glass in its
fleshless hand.

“Behold!” exclaimed the vision pointing to the
things of graves, behold thy doom?”

A shriek of horror came from the lips of the
Duke.

“O, horror of horrors!” he shouted, “It is the
form of Death!—Look! look! Behold! He turns,
he turns with a ghastly smile—he points to the
hourglass!” The tyrant, assassin and betrayer
started forward with every nerve quivering with
the intensity of his terror. “O God of Heaven!
The Sands of the glass are run!”

“Ha!” shrieked the Monk, with a wild yell,
that sounded like the howl of a dying war-horse.
“Heaven wills it, thy sands are run, thy doom
is fixed!”

A stream of light poured around the cell, brighter
than the blaze of the noon-day sun, and a
clap of thunder shook the pillars to their very centre.

With his eyes rolling with affright, the Duke
glanced upward, and beheld the Monk standing
erect, his arms outstretched, and his hood cast
backward from his face.

“O God! Thou here! Albertine—thou here!”

“Ha! It is I!—Thy fate—thy curse—thy
doom!”

The Duke felt himself seized in a grasp of
iron, and hurriedly dragged along the pavement
of stone.

In a moment he heard the sharp spring of a
door closing behind him, and brushing his hand
over his eyes, to restore his fading vision, he looked
around. A spur of the whitened steep on which
the convent was founded, arising some twenty
feet above the body of the mass of rock, was imbeded
in the darkened wall of the tower, with its
summit extending in a platform some three feet
square, toppling over the dark abyss below. Level
as the sun-dial and smooth as polished steel, the
summit of the rock, projecting from the tower,
might scarce afford a resting place for footstep of
human thing. In silence and in awe the Duke
gazed around. Above was the moonlit sky, below
far, far below, a hundred fathoms down sunk the
dark and shadowy abyss, separated from the waters
of the lake by a ridge of rocks, that arose along
the shores of the mountain tarne, overlooking the
sullen blackness of the impenetrable void, on one
side, while on the other towered and frowned the
walls of the gloomy convent. Gazing hurriedly
around, the Duke beheld the walls of the Monastery,
extending on either side of the tower, in whose
stones the platform-rock was imbedded, all smooth,
even and moss-grown; at his back leading into
the cell of St. Areline, was the secret door, fashioned
in complete resemblance to the wall around,
fast closed and secured, while high overhead arose
the dark and frowning fabric of the tower, its rugged
outline, rising like a thing of omen into the
dim blue of the midnight sky.

This platform of rock was never looked upon
by the peasantry of the valley, save with wonder
and with awe—a thousand dark traditions, named
the tower as the scene of many a deed of murder,
and a thousand legends dyed the platform-stone
with the crimson drops of innocent blood.

“Where am I,” shrieked the Duke with a low,
murmured whisper. “It is a dream, a dream
of horror!”

“Thou art in the temple of my vengeance!” the
response came hissing between the clenched teeth
of the monk. “Behold its roof, yon sky, the walls,
the boundless horizon, the floor, the wide earth;
and the place of sacrifice, yon bottomless abyss!”

6. CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE WATCH BESIDE THE DEAD.

“All—all is dark!” the voice broke wild and
whisperingly thro' the midnight gloom of the
place—“I have been dreaming—ah me—a sad and
darksome dream! Methought Adrian lay cold and
dead in my arms, while my hand was entwined in
the locks of his clustering hair, as they fell over
his lifeless face. It was a dream, a fearful dream
—yet—mother of heaven—do I still dream, or is
this darkness real?”

She extended her hands, she passed them hurriedly
along the floor, where her form lay prostrate,
and as she thus wildly sought to grasp the form
so lately reposing in her arms, she exclaimed with
a murmured shriek—

“It flashes on me! All is real—The coffin and
the corse, the assassin and the bowl of death—all
is dark and terrible reality!”

Passing her cold and stiffened hands, slowly
along her forehead, the Ladye Annabel endeavored
to recall the tragedy of that fearful night, in
all its details of horror, and as scene after scene,
action after action, word succeeding word, came
back to her memory, another fearful mystery
passed like a shadow over her brain.

“The corse reposed in these arms—where is it
now? Who hath stolen the body of the dead
from my embrace? And the coffin—it is gone!
They have borne him to the grave!”

And as the low whispers broke from her lips,
this fair and gentle creature, whose nature was
soft and yielding, as is ever the nature of a true
woman, in moments of calm and sunshine, yet
susceptible of deeds of the highest courage and noblest
determination, in the hour of storm and cloud
now arose from the floor, her frame all chilled
and stiffened by the hard repose of that fearful
watch, and extending her hands she wandered
slowly around the chamber, seeking with hushed
breath, for the coffin and the corse.

All was darkness, thick and intense darkness.
Slowly and with cautious steps she paced around
the room, passing her hands along the folds of the
tapestry, or extending her small and delicate foot
in the effort to touch the coffin, but her search
was all in vain. She wandered around the chamber,
until her recollection of the particular features
of the room became vague and indistinct, and at
last with trembling hands and a bewildered brain,
she stood erect and motionless.

“All—all is vain!” she cried—“corse and coffin
all are gone. They have borne him to the
grave!”

While the weary moments dragged heavily on,
she stood silent and unmoveable, endeavoring to
catch the faintest echo of a sound, or hear the
slightest whisper of a voice, but all was silent as
death. At last a distant and moaning murmur
reached her ears. Gradually tho' slowly it deepened
into a booming sound, and at last the subterranean
arches of the old convent, seemed alive
with gathering echoes, and the long corridors
gave back the tramp of footsteps and the hum of
human voices.

“They come—they come”—whispered the
Ladye Annabel—“They come to bear me to the
bridal!”

The bell of the convent, deep-toned and booming,
rang out the hour of—one—the fatal hour after
midnight.

“Strike for the Winged Leopard—strike for
Albarone!” the shout came echoing along the corridors.

“Strike for Albarone and Florence!” the mingling
war-cry reached the ears of the maiden.
And in a moment, the tapestry, concealing the
entrance to the room from which Adrian had issued
ere he drank the bowl, was hurriedly thrust
aside, and amid the blaze of torches, the Ladye
Annabel, beheld the glare of armour and the flash
of upraised swords, while the stern visage of the
warrior-band were gazing upon her pale countenance
and trembling form.

“Saved, by St. Withold!” shouted a soldier,
springing from the crowd—“Ladye tell us, in
God's name, where is the Lord Adrian?”

“They have borne him to the grave!” was the
whispered and ghastly response.

The bluff soldier turned aside, and it might
be noted that his blue eyes were wet with tears.
In a moment he again faced the crowd of warriors.

“Behold the Queen!” he shouted and the men-at-arms,
sank kneeling to the floor—“all hail the
fair Ladye Annabel, Duchess of Florence!”

And the solitary chamber rung with the echo of
the thunder shout—

“All hail the Fair Ladye Annabel, Duchess of
Florence!”

7. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
THE COFFIN AND THE CORSE.

THE CLOCK STRIKES ONE, AND THE SWORDER
SEALS HIS FATE BY A TOUCH
OF THE FATAL SPRING.

Far beneath the Convent, down in the very
bosom of the earth, far beneath the chamber of
the death-bowl, alone and in darkness, rested the
coffin and the corse for the space of an hour,
awaiting the spade and the Sexton, the priest
with his prayers, and the grave with its silence.

The sound of trampling feet, broke along the
silence of the earth-hidden passage, and presently,
through the crevices of the dungeon door, thin
rays of light streamed along the cell. Then there
was drawing of bolts, and rattling of chains, and
in an instant the ruddy glare of torches, revealed
the ill-looking form of Balvardo, standing in the
doorway, and beside him stood a short, thin old
man, with slight locks of grey hair, falling upon
his coarse doublet. There was a vacant and wandering
expression in his eye, while his parched
lips, hanging apart, gave an idiotic appearance to
his countenance. The long, talon-like fingers of
his withered right hand, grasped a spade covered
with rust, and eaten by time.

“Ha—ha!” laughed Balvardo. “The potion
which I gave her, some hours ago, wrapt her in
a sleep, like the slumber of old death. Blood o'
the Turk, how her hands clutched the body o'
the dead, when I first tried to tear it from her
arms—even in her sleep she clutched it! I have
him at last—sound and sure! He escaped me
in the cell of the Doomed, escaped this sword in
the Cavern of the Dead, and—and—now, by the
fiend I have him at last!”

The Sworder advanced to the Coffin, he gazed
upon the pale face of the dead, with a long and
anxious look.

“He, he, he,” chuckled the old man, “Why
didst thou hate him, noble Captain?”

“I know not,” muttered Balvardo, with an absent
air, “yet I always had a sneaking suspicion
that one day or other, this man, now a corse,
would work my death! A queer feeling always
haunted me, that made me feel like the felon walking
to his doom, so long as this—father-murderer
remained alive! Now he is dead, but I fear him
yet, and will fear him till he is safely buried i' the
earth!”

“Thou wouldst cover his face with this rich,
yellow earth?” sneered the ancient man,—“He,
he he! The grave hides all secrets!”

“To thy duty, Old Gibber-jabber,” exclaimed
Balvardo, “Here's thy man. Lay hold of him
and help me to drag the coffin to the other side
of the dungeon. Pull him along—there—there!”

Throwing the coffin upon the damp earth, the
old man placed a smoking lamp near the prostrate
head of the corse, and then intently watched the
motions of Balvardo, who was drawing the point
of his sword along the surface of the earth.

“Let me do't, let me do't, most noble captain,”
exclaimed the old man, pushing Balvardo aside,
—“for years, and years, and years, man and boy,
have I wielded this good spade, here in these
nice, cozy, comfortable chambers! He—he—he!
To think a fellow like thee, with that miserable
tool, that is unworthy to be called a—spade—to
think that a stranger like thee, should think to
excel me—Old Glow-worm—in laying out a
grave!—He—he—he!”

“Old Glow-worm!—Ha ha ha!—a choice
name by my soul!”

“A very good name; they call me so—they
who bring me food every day—they poke it
through the big door through which thou didst
pass, most noble captain. A merry time we've
had of it here—a merry time!”

“We!—who dost thou mean?”

“Well! Thou art a fool, beshrew me!—we
I and my comrades, who always receive our food
at the big iron door. Here, long, long, very long,
we have lived in these nice cozy chambers.
—Sometimes they fight and kill one another—
then I dig their graves! See! how nicely the rich
earth turns up! This is a spade!”

Prattling after this fashion, the poor old idiot
turned up the earth till he stood in a square hole
about a foot in depth, when a glance at the pale
visage of Adrian arrested his attention.

“He, he, he! They always look so!—Queer,
—eh, noble captain?”

“What! hast ever had any other business of
this sort?”

“Why, bless ye, most noble captain, I've put
scores and scores of them under the rich, yellow
earth. They bring 'em to me—they at the big

iron door. This is earth for ye! Look! how the
spade sinks into the mould!—He, he, he!”

“What an old devil!” muttered Balvardo to
himself. How canst thou be merry in these
glomy pits? eh, Old One?”

“Merry?—He, he, he! Merry didst say, why
bless ye, when I and my comrades gather round our
food, I am as merry as is the sound of this spade,
driving into the earth! Merry! why I sing, most
noble captain, I sing!”

“Thou sing! Ha ha ha! Thou indeed!”

“Why not I, eh? Beshrew me but thou art a
fool! I can sing such a right mirthful song—but
they never like it—they my comrades!”

“By Saint Peter, I'll wager a stoup of wine,
that thou didst never see the light of day—eh,
old rat?”

“Day! what is that?—But for my song—here
goes!,'

And then busily plying the spade, in a cracked
voice he sang the following words, in a sort of
wild chaunt, which he occasionally varied by
sounds that resembled the yell of a screech-owl.

THE SONG OF THE ANCIENT MAN.[1]

As he sang, the old man plunged the spade lustily
into the earth, and throwing aside the large
lumps of clay, he continued with great glee—

He wound this up with an unnatural noise,
half shrick, and half yell, and hollow and dread
the dungeon arches gave back the strain.

“He, he, he!—I know a merrier catch than
that! List ye, my noble captain.”

He then made a motion with his hand, as if in
the act of drinking, and then a shout of wild
laughter sounded through the cell.

He swept his spade around with maniac glee,
and then in a voice louder and shriller, while his
shrunken breast heaved with the wildness of his
emotion, he sang,

“A brave song! Ha ha ha!” By my faith a
brave song! Where didst pick it up, Old Screech-Owl,
eh?”

“Glow-worm is my name,” replied the other
demurely,—“Glow-worm—ah! but this is rich
earth! Look! what big, lusty, clumps. He, he,
he! How cold and pale he looks—he that I am
to hury—See!”

“He doth look cold and pale!” muttered Balvardo.
“Is the grave deep enough, Devil-darkness?
Let's house him i' th' earth without delay.”

“The grave scarce reaches to my middle—deeper
let us dig it, noble captain—deeper!”

“I tell thee, Devil-darkness, I cannot look upon
the cold and stony face of the dead! Deeper
thou mayst dig the grave—but the body must be
kidden from sight in the meanwhile. 'Slife—I left
my cloak in the vaults above, and I have no robe
to throw over the coffin!”

“He—he—he, thou'rt a brave man, yet poor
old Glow-worm knows more than thee! Look
around the cell, most noble captain, and tell me
what thou see'st?”

“I see the rough walls of stone, the roof of rock
the floor of clay. Not a whit more, by the
Fiend!”

“Look again—pass thine eyes along the wall
opposite yon oaken door. What seest thou now,
most noble captain?”

“I see a bolt of iron, rusted and time-eaten, projecting
from the wall—”

“Wouldst know how to open a passage into
the stone-room, next to this cell? Move the bolt
quickly to and fro, and yon massy stone will roll
back into the stone-room! Thou canst lay the
coffin within its walls, until the grave is deep
enow.”

“The bolt moves—ha! The stone, the massive
stone glides from the wall—another push at the
bolt! There—blood o' Mahound, I behold a dark
passage into this dismal room! 'Slife! there is
a current of air rushing from this open space—
what may it mean?”

“Dost wish to hide the corse? Eh—most noble
captain? Lay hold of t'other end o' th' coffin.
and I will raise this end. We'll bear it to the
stone-room!”

In a moment they raised the coffin, and bearing
it toward the open space, Balvardo retreated backwards,
through the passage, and in another instant
was lost to view, while the foot of the coffin
still projected into the dungeon-cell.

“Bear it through the passage, Glow-worm!”
cried Balvardo. “In a moment we will have it
laid along the floor of this dreary place!”

“It is heavy,” cried the old man; “my strength
fails me. Thou wilt have to bear the burden thyself,
most noble captain! Glow-worm lifts no
heavy burden!”

“Be it so,” growled Balvardo. “'Slife I like
not to be alone with the dead! Slowly, slowly, drag
the coffin along the floor of stone, there—it rests
against the wall! Now for the grave.”

“What dreary sound is that, thundering far
above? Oft have I heard it, yet ne'er could tell
what it might mean?”

“The Convent clock strikes—one!” muttered
Balvardo. “A few moments and my reward is
sure!”

“Beware the secret spring!” shrieked the old man,
as tho' his crazed mind had been fixed by some
sudden thought. “Beware the secret spring! It
sticks from the floor near the very wall, where
thou hast laid the coffin. An' thy foot presses
the spring the stone rolls back, and—he, he, he—
thou art buried alive!”

It was too late! Even as the old man spoke, Balvardo
stumbled along the floor of the stone-room
his foot pressed the point of iron projecting from
the floor, and the massive rock rolled back to its
place, in the masonry of the substantial wall.

“I fear, I fear,” murmured the old man gazing
around with an affrighted look; “I fear they,” pointing
above, “they will lash me for this! He, he,
he! I bade him beware of the spring within the
stone room, and he would not. I cannot turn
this bolt, the old man is not strong enough. Ha,
ha, here is a torch; Glow-worm has not had a torch
in his hand for years! Ho, ho, ho, the noble captain
came here to bury the dead, and, ho, ho, ho,
he is buried alive!”

8. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE FATE OF THE BETRAYER.

SWEETER THAN THE LOVE OF WOMAN,
DEARER THAN GLORY TO THE WARRIOR,
POWER TO THE PRINCE, OR HEAVEN TO
THE DEVOTEE, IS THE CONSUMMATION
OF A LONG SOUGHT AND SILENTLY TREASURED
REVENGE.

“Where am I?” shrieked the Duke, as he stood
upon the platform of the convent tower. “'Tis
a hideous dream, 'tis a fearful nightmare! Ha!
my brain reels. I'll gaze no longer down the fearful
abyss! Is there none to awake me, none? Horror
of horrors! This demon hand will strangle
me, closer and tighter it winds around my throat,
ah!”

A wild laugh of intense joy came from the chest
of the Monk. “I feast upon thy misery,” he cried
“wretch, I banquet upon thy agony! Ha, ha, ha!
The glory of this moment I would not barter for
all the joys of heaven! Dost thou shiver, dost
thou tremble, well thou mayst! Look down, far,
far below! Dost see any hope there, what says
the whitened precipice? Hath the dark abyss no
voice? Look above, canst glean naught from the
frown of the tower that is over thy doomed and
devoted head? Or mayhap the secret door may
afford thee consolation? Speak—thou for whose
crime earth hath no word, hell no name, speak
that I may feast upon the music of thy quailing
voice!”

Tighter he wound his grasp around the throat
of the trembling wretch, and with his dark eye
flashing with all the frenzy of supernatural revenge
he shook the form of the Duke over the awfu
abyss.

“1s't thou, good Albertine? Hold, hold, or I

shall fall. 'Tis a fearful steep! Behold, a flock of
snow white sheep are grazing in you distant
vale, they seem but as mice at this fearful height.
Thou, thou wilt not harm me, good Albertine?”

“Look, look!—Behold her pale form is floating
in the moonlight, her face is wan, and her look
is that of despair! Ha! her glazing eyes are fixed
upon thee—thee—her BETRAVER! She beckons me
over the steep!—I come—I come!”

“Nay, good Albertine, grasp me not so tight!—
Bring to mind the days when we were sworn
friends—”

“Friends? Doomed man, the memory of former
days shall but hurl added torture upon
thy head!—Friends?—Ah! like a dream it comes
over my mind! I was a peasant boy—thou didst
raise me to rank and power, and I have loved ye
as brother loves brother. Could my life have served
thee, it would have been laid at thy feet. My
life thou did'st not take. No! no! But the treasured
hope of years, the glowing fancies of a
musing boy, the anticipations of happiness that
haunted my dreams by night, and lived in
my thoughts by day; these—at one fell remorseless
blow, thou did'st sweep away. It was upon her
grave; the grave of thy victim, that one thought
possessed my soul. For years and years have I
planned, have I schemed, nay wept, prayed for
the fulfilment of that thought. And now it is
fulfilled. I have thee in my grasp! Think'st
thou a thousand worlds would buy thy craven life?
That heaven or hell would tear thee from my
hand?”

Again he gave utterance to the frenzied joy of his
soul in a loud wild laugh, that burst fearfully upon
the midnight air.

“Albertine spare me, spare me! Take not my
life.”

“Spare thee? and you pale form waving me onward?
spare thee? wretch I tell thee all nature
is celebrating thy doom! The moon is sinking
below the horizon, and the stars gleam thro' the
gathering pall of darkness like funeral fires!
Spare thee!”

“Ha! whence come those shouts! I may yet be
be saved!”

“Thou mayst be saved—ha—ha—ha! It gives
me joy to drag thee o'er this steep, craving and
hoping for life, to thy latest grasp! Look around
Urbano, Duke of Florence, look around and behold
the fair and beautiful earth, scene of thy
crimes—nay, nay THY CRIME—behold the earth
for the last time!”

It was a weird and awful scene. The dizzy
height of the platform rock, the vast azure with
its boundless horizon, all beaming with the grandeur
of the stars, the massive hills sweeping
around the mountain-lake, darkening the clear
waters with their midnight shadow, the pile of
rocks uprising beyond the darkness of the unathomable
abyss, the silence and the awe that
rested upon the hour, broken by the sound of far-off
shouts, while on the very verge of the eastern
sky, bloody and red, the full-orbed moon was sinking
slowly down, casting a dim and lurid light
over mountain and stream, convent and plain—all
formed a scene of dark and fearful interest. The
Universe, awful and vast seemed to hold a strange
sympathy with the Revenge of Albertine the Monk,
the stars gave their solemn light to the scene,
and the blood-red moon lit up the funeral pile
of the Doomed.

“I gazed around, 'tis an awful scene. And
thou, thou wilt spare me, good Albertine?”

“As thou didst spare thy victim, when her
voice rung in thy ears of stone, shrieking for pity!”
The response came hissing thro' the clenched
teeth of Albertine! “Betrayer, I again tell thee all
nature is celebrating thy doom! The moon is
sinking below the horizon, and the stars gleam
thro' the gathering pall of darkness like funeral
fires!”

Thrilled with terror and appalled to the very
soul, by the erect form and flashing eye of the
Monk, the Duke stood trembling and quivering
like a reed, on the verge of the platform rock.

“Choose the manner of thy death! Leap from
the rock, or behold, I raise before thy very eyes
this dagger; the dagger of the Holy Steel!”

“Thou wilt not slay me thus, good Albertine,”
shrieked the Duke. “Mercy—for the sake of God
—mercy!”

“Thine own mercy I give back to thee! Leap
from the rock, or this dagger seeks thy heart.
Ha! that pale form, that dim and shadowy face,
floating in the midnight air, with the eyes of
speechless woe! She beckons me onward. He
comes, pale spirit—thy betrayer comes! An instant,
and lo! before the bar of eternity he shall
tremble at the frown of the Unknown!”

It was a scene of sickening horror, yet dignified
and consecrated by the mighty revenge of the

monk. His face pale as death, his lips livid with
fear, his eyes rolling and vacant in their glance,
the Duke stepped trembling backward, while the
monk strode one step forward, raising the keen
steel aloft, with a slow movement, yet with a
quick eye and a determined arm.

“Leap—leap—or the dagger seeks thy heart!”

The Duke looked wildly around, and, shaking
his hands aloft, gnashed his teeth in very despair.
Another moment! The monk alone stood on the
platform, while a rushing sound swept through
the air, far, far below, as though a weight of iron
had been toppled from the rock. Albertine slowly
advanced to the edge of the platform, and gazed
into the void below. With a fixed and glaring
eye, with the dagger raised aloft in his right hand,
he gazed below, and beheld the folds of a garment
waving through the darkened air, while a yell
most fearful and maddening to hear, came shrieking
from the darkness of the void, resounding to
the very heavens above, until the air grew animate
with the sound of despair—unutterable despair.

Then came a crashing sound, as though a heavy
body had fallen against the projecting points of
the rugged rocks, and then all became silent. Silence
gathered over the universe, like one vast
brooding shadow of omen and doom.

The wild flush of excitement vanished from the
face of the monk. With a calm brow, a compressed
lip, a cheek pale as death, and a full dark eye,
that seemed blazing forth from the shadow of the
brow, he folded his arms silently on his breast,
and looked up to the midnight heavens.

“She beckons me over the beckons, she beckons
me; and, with her burning eyes fixed upon my
face, she waves her hands, and bids me—on, on!
She points to the scenes of the past: God of my
soul, how real, how vivid, how like the pictures of
memory! The cottage in the vale; the sunshine
sleeping on the roof sheltered by vines; the lordly
hall and the friend—the friend—the outrage, the
lifeless form, and then comes the spirit of my desolation,
laughing with scorn as he points to the
shadow blackening o'er the dial plate of destiny!

“Nay, nay, wave not thy hands with that slow
and solemn motion—glide not so ghastily to and
fro—thine eyes burn in my very soul! I come,
I come! Albertine glides onward to his bride!”

With folded arms, with calm and immovable
countenance, fixing his glance upon the vacant air,
without a fear, a sorrow, or a sight, the avenger
stepped from the platform rock, and with the speed
of an arrow driven home by the strong arm of the
archer, he sunk into the darkness of the abyss.
There was a low moaning exclamation of joy,
and the setting moon looked on the falling form no
more.

9. CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THREE DAYS ELAPSE.

JOY COMES AND POWER, BUT DEATH HAS
GRASPED THE VICTIM.

The morning sunshine, streaming through the
deep silled casement of the convent cell, filled the
lonely chamber with light; the arching roof and
the pavement of stone, the dark grey walls, thronged
with monkish effigies, and the distant corner
of the room, all glowing with warm glimpses of
the daybeams, while a solitary soldier strode
slowly along the floor, his brow darkening with a
frown, as, with his clear blue eyes fixed on vacancy
his mind was absorbed in dark and painful
thought.

“St Withold! and all the Saints in heaven or
earth save me now!” he absently muttered, as his
right hand grasped the hilt of his good sword.—
“Here's a new wonder, a fresh mysterie! Three
—three days agone—we were all fighting and
slashing, leading murderers to death, and pulling
Dukes from their thrones, daring death in as many
shapes as swords are fashioned, and all for my
Lord Adrian, and lo! we bend all things to our
will, dethrone the tyrant, and fill the people's
throats with an outcry for the new duke, and
what comes next? Answer my good Robin—
answer my old friend—where is the new duke?
God knows, and the Saints might tell, an' we
knew how to ask them, but not a white does Rough
Robin know about the matter. The old priest
was wont to tell me that the ways of Him above
—off with thy cap, Robin—were full of mysterie.
I never knew what he meant till now—”

The small door of the cell slowly grated on its
hinges, and as the yeoman turned to discover the
cause, he beheld standing before him a cavalier
whose form was attired in glossy purple and
bright gold, yet all soiled and tarnished with dust,
while his young face, all pale and careworn, bore

traces of the fearful struggle that had shaken his
soul within the past few days.

“Ah—Guiseppo! Pale and careworn—thine
attire covered with dust—thy broken plume sweeping
o'er thy brow—whence came ye boy, in
such attire and in such a ghastly trim?”

“I greet thee, good Robin. Yesternight I left
the Castle of Albarone—this morn I journeyed
from the walls of Florence.”

“Thou dost bear a message?”

“I come from the nobles and the people of
Florence! Three nights agone the old walls of
the fair city rung with the clash of arms and the
peal of trumpet, while the tramp of contending
foemen shook the floor of the ducal palace, and
the glimmer of their swords was reflected in the
very mirrors of the Tyrant-Duke. The morning
dawned at last, and dawned on Florence, no
longer oppressed by the tyrant or awed by the
vassals of his power. Then it was that the nobles
of Florence named their new Duke, then it
was that the people confirmed their choice, while
the solemn High Priest of the Invisible, by
a parchment scroll affixed to a pillar of the grand
cathedral, pronounced his blessing on the fortune
of Adrian, Count of Albarone and Duke of Florence—”

“Thus far all was well. Then ye learned the
mysterious disappearance of Lord Adrian? Speak
I the truth, Guiseppo? The dark scenes which
three nights agone gave new legends of horror to
the walls of this convent of darkness? The
death-bowl administered by the hands of Albertine
—the watch of the Ladye Annabel beside the
corse—the disappearance of the body, and what
troubles me but little, the disappearance of the
tyrant-duke? A thousand such dukes might disappear,
and we could tell, without a doubt, what
became of them all, `the devil takes care of his
own' saith the adage—”

“Hast thou no word of the Lord Adrian?”

“Ask the tombs in the aisles of the convent
chapel, which yesternoon we ransacked in search
of his body, and let their yawning mouths tell
the story of our fruitless labor. St Withold!
scarce a foot of earth in the convent garden that
we did not turn to the sun in our search—not a
cell in the earth-hidden recesses of this foul den,
that we failed to illumine with the glare of our
torches, not a wizard nook or a blood-stained
corner in this devil's hall, but was laid open to
the light, in our strange chase after the body of
the dead! And it was all in vain, Guiseppo, all
in vain!”

“The Ladye Annabel—hast thou no word of
her, Rough Robin?”

“St. Withold, I see her now! Traversed we
the dark walls in search of the corse? She went
with us, tho' her feet sunk ankle-deep in the dust
of the dead, at every step. She led us on to the
fatal room, where the corse had been stolen from
her grasp, while bewitched by the drugged potion;
she pointed the way to the dark cavern beneath
the convent, and when every heart failed, awed
with supernatural fear, she, even the fair and gentle
Ladye Annabel, still cried on, and on! An'
the saints shower not their blessings on her head,
I'll turn Paynim-hound, and kiss the crescent!”

“Dwelleth the Ladye still within the Convent
walls?”

“Since the hour of our search yesternight, she
hath shrouded herself within the recesses of the
apartments furnished for her use by the vassa
of Albarone, when they hastened hither, two days
agone. Hast thou a message for the Ladye?”

“I bear a message for the Ladye, and a parchment
scroll for the Invisible! Robin come
hither—a word in thy ear!”

With the mystic sign of a Neophyte of the
Holy Steel, he asked the way to the solemn place,
where the order assembled holding their secret yet
mighty councils.

“Even now they hold their solemn council, within
these convent walls,” answered Robin the
Rough—“In a moment I'll lead thee to the secret
chamber. Yet stay a single moment Guiseppo.
Thou knowest I left the castle on that fearful day,
when, when, od's death I cannot name the deed—

“That blow, Great God, will the memory never
pass from my brain! Thou wouldst speak of—of
my father?”

“Does the old man live?”

“When thou didst leave the castle, I stood
watching silently beside the door of the chamber
where lay my father, my own father, stricken down
by the hand — the hand of his own son.”

“You watched beside the door, while the leech
who had been hurried from the City of Florence
disrobed your father, and probed the dagger
wound?”

“And I—I, stood trembling beside the door

waiting the appearance of the leech, every moment
expecting to hear the words—`thy father is dead!
Dead—murdered by his son!' I stood beside the
chamber door, all alive with horror, my fancy picturing
the dagger, which but a few hours agone, I
had drawn from his heart, the point crimsoned
with one fearful stain of blood, there I stood, fire
in my brain, and hell in my heart, when—”

“Ha, ha, ha—Ho, ho, ho! I have the brand,
the flaming brand,” a wild and maddened voice
awoke the echoes of the corridor leading to the
cell, with its tones of maniac yell. “Ho, ho, ho! I
have the brand, the flaming brand! Look ye how
it flashes on high, 'tis a serpont, a merry serpent
with tongue of fire! Ha, ha, for the brand, the
flaming brand!”

The small door of the cell, grated on its hinges,
and in the very centre of the pavement, brandishing
a fire brand over his head, there stood, a weak
and trembling old man, his thin face, with the vacant
eye and hanging lip, flushed with madness,
while his voice half shriek and half yell, rang echoing
round the room. “The brand, ha, ha the flaming
brand! Ha, ha, ye brought the old man no
food! Ho, ho, ho, Old Glow-worm and his comrades
starve, yet there is a merry blaze in the vault below
I trow! Rafters are all aflame, massy bolts are red
with fire, and my comrades go shouting merrily
thro' the long vaults, waving their brands on high,
and singing a joyous song as they go—

10. CHAPTER THE TENTH.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHRONICLE.

TO BE READ BY ALL WHO WOULD LOOK
BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF FATE, AND
GAZE UPON THE SECRET SPRINGS
THAT MOVE MEN TO DEEDS OF WOE
AND WAR AND DEATH.

“Florence is free!”

“Florence is free!” echoed the Monks of the
Holy Steel, and the shout resounded through the
circular room of the tower, repeated by the Neophytes
of the Order, with one wild acclaim. “Florence
the fair and beautiful is free!”

Slowly the High Priest of the Order arose. The
light fell dimly and obscured from the dome of the
tower-room some twenty feet overhead, over the
forms of Monks seated around the square table,
all robed and muffled in sweeping garments of
sable, over the figures of the Neophytes grouped
around the Superiors of the order, clustered along
the circular wall of the twilight chamber standing
shoulder to shoulder, each right hand raising
aloft the keen and glittering dagger, as the left
held the torch on high, with the light extinguished,
the fire quenched, while stately and erect, in
the midst of the scene towered the tall figure of the
High Priest, his form robed and muffled, and his
face concealed from the day-beams, his hands
extended over the heads of the secret brethren in
the gesture of benediction.

And at the other end of the table sate the veiled
Doomsman, his rough hand appearing from
the folds of the black robe, laid along the handle
of the axe, whose steel was crusted with the rust
of blood.

“Three years ago,” thus spoke the high priest,
“the cry of blood, day and night, unceasingly and
forever, went shriecking up to the throne of God
for vengeance. From the walls of the fair city
it shrieked, from the plain it echoed, from the
mountain side that low moaning voice rose up to
the blue sky, pleading for the doom of the assassin,
the death of the tyrant. Then it was in times of
blood-shed and slaughter, in the days of foul misrule
and galling wrong, when the grim bravo
whetted his knife on the stones of the altar,
and the corses of the murdered crowded the sanctuary
of God, then it was, that a few brave and
determined men, evoked from the shadows of the
past, a Power, mighty yet secret, blasting as the
thunder-stroke, yet invisible as the grave!

“The Power of the Steel—winged by the
hands of those twin-sisters of vengeance, Secrecy
and Mystery.

“Three years past, and on the lips of men, there
grew a mighty word—the Steel, the Holy Steel!
The bravo still smote his victim in the silence of
the night, but ere the morrow's sun, the corse of
the assassin lay prostrate beside the murdered;
the wronger still pursued his work of violence, but
it was by stealth and in secrecy; the tyrant still
filled the air with shrieks of death and cries of
despair, but the trembling tones of his own guilty
voice mingled with the last words of the slain; the
secret band, were abroad—the invisible struck
their keen dagger suddenly and without mercy

from the shelter of the cloud that enclosed their
existence, and more terrible on the lips of men
grew that sound of fear—The vengeance of the
Holy Steel.

“Not many days agone, the work which the
Order had sworn to fulfil, was hastened by a
new crime of the tyrant. The last baron of the race
of Albarone, whom the brethren of the steel had
resolved to invest with the royal robes of the Ducal
throne, awaited within the walls of a dungeon
the coming of the morrow, which was to bring to
his head the woe and the doom, the axe, the wheel,
the scaffold, and the stake. Doomed on a false
accusation, doomed on the testimony of forsworn
tools of power, Adrian of Albarone had laid him
down to die, when the Messenger of the Steel
appeared, the rescue was planned, and the morrow
morn beheld the prisoner free.

“The march of fate trode swiftly on. All men
named our brother—may God receive his soul—as
the tool and minion of the Duke, while—it gives
me joy to say it—he walked abroad the messenger
of the steel.”

“All hail the spirit of Albertine!” arose the
solemn exclamation of the brethren—“all hail
the incarnate spirit of our order!”

“The last scene came hastening on. And the
hand of fate pointed to this lonely Convent of the
Mountain Lake, as the place where the wrongs of
years should be avenged, where the Tyrant should
meet his secret and fearful doom. For long years
these halls had been peopled by a monkish band,
who wore their sacred robes as a cleak for blasphemies
too horrible to name; while the Dukes,
the Tyrant-Dukes of Florence, startled these ancient
walls with the noonday debauch, the mid-night
orgie, the sunshine murder, or the torchlight
massacre!

“Here not many days agone, came Albertine
the Monk. Still in the confidence of the Duke—
for a specious tale blinded the eyes of the Tyrant
with regard to the part our brother bore in the
escape of the Doomed—still in the confidence of
the Duke, the convent doors flew open at his word,
Lord Adrian found a home within these walls,
and day by day, secretly and surely, Albertine
made converts of the Abbot and the Brethren of
this Monastery of crime. A few days past, the
tools and minions of the Duke, they now became
the sworn Neophytes of the Order of the Holy
Steel: It was the purpose of Albertine, to lure
the Duke to the lonely Convent, and while the
sound of his midnight wassail, awoke the echoes
of the old walls, the Avenger would strike the
dagger to his heart. The treachery of a peasant
of the lonely valley hastened his schemes to their
completion.

“The last night came. The Duke, flushed with
pride, and made reckless by revenge, rode through
the convent gates, companioned by his bravoes, who
held their knives on high, shouting for the blood
of Adrian, the Traitor. And while they prepared
the doom of Lord Adrian, in the lonely valley,
the Invisible bestrode the mighty storm of vengeance
that darkened over the night in Florence.
The morning dawned on Florence the Free!

“The morning dawned over the lonely valley,
and the blood-stained Convent. Along the halls,
and through the vaults of the ancient fabric were
heaped the corses of the bravoes, while the Brethren
of our Order, ran from hall to hall, from vault
to vault, lifting the red steel on high, as they
sought for new victims, while the shout of vengeance
rang pealing from roof to floor, until the
air seemed animate with the cry of death.

“The Monks of the Steel came hurrying to the
convent, two hours after midnight, but they came
too late. The Duke, Albertine and Lord Adrian,
all had disappeared. The morning dawned on
Florence, unshackled and free, but the Duke, chosen
of God, was gone. Brethren, ye have all heard
the fearful story of that night of terror—the farewell
of Albertine, uttered in the hillside cot, his
sudden re-appearance before the eyes of Adrian,
when awaiting his doom in the earth-hidden vault
—ye have heard how the bowl of death was given
to the Duke-elect by the monk—the singular disappearance
of Albertine and the Duke when they
entered the Chamber of St. Areline—all has reached
your ears, and all is wrapt in mystery—”

“The dark story of the bowl of death, hath
been darkening o'er my soul since that night of
terror and joy,” exclaimed a veiled Monk of the
Order through the folds of his robe as he slowly
rose from his seat. “A light breaks over the chaos
of doubt and mystery—a sad and fearful light.
Albertine crazed by revenge, maddened by his
thirst for the blood of the Tyrant-Duke, beheld the
midnight hour approach, while the Brothers of
the Invisible still delayed their coming. The
Duke bade him perform this work of doom. Albertine
must either refuse, or excite the suspicion
of the tyrant. 'Twas a terrible thing—oh, most
terrible to poison the young Lord at the bidding
of this changeling Duke, but Albertine had no

alternative. The plans of revenge were not yet
altogether ripe, an hour would warm them into
life. He was forced to slay Adrian to retain the
confidence of the Tyrant—sooner would Albertine
make the Fair City itself a desert of whitened
bones, than the Duke, against whom his very soul
had sworn vengeance, should live. He slow Lord
Adrian, though his heart wept blood-drops in the
act—and then came his strange and mysterious
vengeance on the Tyrant.”

A low deep murmur ran round the walls of the
Tower-room. Every heart was impressed with
the terrible truth shadowed in the words of the
Brother of the Steel, and in a pause of intense silence,
each heart solemnly mused on the dark
story of Albertine, his last crime, and his last revenge.

“Adrian sleeps with his murdered father,”
again spoke the High-Priest. “Brothers of the
Holy Steel, prince and peasant, lord and monk,
joined in the work of vengeance on the Wronger,
death to the slayer, ye who won for the Fair City,
peace and freedom, ye who rule her destines,
guide her fate, your High-Priest asks you the solemn
question—Who shall wear the Ducal Coronet
of Florence?”

The bold words were yet ringing on his lips
when a shout from the stairway leading to the
tower, rung through the circular room—

“Ha—ha—ha! I bear the brand—the flaming
brand! See—how it whirls on high—look how
it blazes! Ye sought well and ye sought long,
but ye could not find old Glow-worm and his comrades!”

The small door of the tower-room was flung
suddenly open, and rushing through the aperture,
the slender form of the weak and trembling maniac
stood disclosed before the vision of the secret
brothers; the blazing torch he grasped in his right
hand flinging a blood-red light over the veiled
figures of monk and neophyte, while the walls of
the room were illumined with fitful glimpses
of the ruddy beams.

“Ha—ha—ha! The brand, the flaming brand!
Ye sought well and ye sought long—but ye might
not find the nest of old Glow-worm and his
brothers! Merry was the fire they built—merry,
oh, merry! Cheerily the flame arose—oh cheerily!
And now—ha, ha, stone burns, roof burns, floor
burns, all is fire—and ha, ha, I bear the brand,
the flaming brand!”

And as the maniac swung the burning brand,
whirling and hissing round his head, there came
hastening through the narrow doorway a gaily
attired cavalier, bearing the trembling form of a
young and lovely woman in his arms, followed by
a stout and bluff soldier, whose face was stamped
with an expression of alarm most strange to see
on his determined features, while he aided the
youth and maiden onward in their flight from
the fire and flame below.

“Health to the Holy Steel!” cried the cavalier
rushing forward; “I bear a message from the Lords
and People of Florence!”

“Ye will have to be wondrous hasty with your
messages, I tell ye!” exclaimed the bluff soldier.
“For d'ye see—all below us is flame and death—
the convent is on fire, by St. Withold!”

“Brethren of the Holy Steel,” exclaimed the
High Priest, as opening the pacquet he gazed
calmly round over the erect forms of the uprisen
monks and neophytes of the order—“who shall
wear the ducal crown of Florence?”

“The Ladye Annabel!” echoed the Brethren of
the Holy Steel with one unanimous shout. “Live
the Ladye Annabel, Queen of Florence!”

A moment passes—behold the spectacle!

A fair andlovely form, clad in robes of fluttering
white, stands trembling in the midst of the group
of black-robed men who cluster round, kneeling on
the pavement, as they raise their hands in one
hurried movement and shout with wild acclaim—

“Live the Queen—live the Ladye Annabel,
Duchess of Florence!”

And as the Secret Brethren sank kneeling round,
priest and neophyte, all with heads bent low, before
the form of the Ladye Annabel, who gazed
around with a wild and wondering look, there
standing erect with a flushed cheek and a rolling
eye, the ancient man of the vault flung the brand
aloft, whirling the flame round and round again,
as he shouted—

“'Tis merry, 'tis merry, ha, ha! 'Tis merry,
'tis merry—hurrah! Old Glow-worm is a demon
—these all are demons! Ha, ha! Fire above,
and fire below—old Glow-worm is king! On—
on—brothers—on—light up the cozy nooks with
the red flame—fire the timbers, heat the old rocks,
scare old Death with the light! Ha—ha—ha!
The stone rolled back, and he—was buried alive!'

“Up, up—an' ye bear the hearts of men—up
and save yourselves and save the Queen!” shouted
Robin the Rough. “The fire has chased us through
the long galleries of the convent, from chamber to
chamber, from room to room, has it followed

roaring at our heels! Up, and save the Queen!
Her attendants have escaped or fallen in the flames.
Yonder by the window of the stairway is our only
hope! A staircase of massive stone, built outside
the walls of this tower, leads downward to the
southern wing of the convent, yet untouched by
flame! Up, and save the Queen!”

“Listen, Brothers of the Invisible, listen to the
last words ye shall ever hear from your High
Priest. Our oath is fulfilled, the Tyrant is dead,
Florence is free! And here in this lofty tower,
environed by flame, with the hissing of the fire
filling our ears, and the lurid smoke rolling up to
the heavens, with flame and death all around, here
in this dark and blood-stained House of St. Benedict,
do I, your High Priest and Sire, dissolve the
Order of the Monks of the Holy Steel! When
Wrong arises, then shall ye again spring into life,
when Murder walks abroad in the sunshine,
aughing in the face of God, then shall His ministers
again raise the Invisible steel! Till then I
dissolve your band, give back your oath.

“Prince and peasant, lord and monk—off with
your sacred garments, off with the vestments in
which ye have been robed as the avengers of God,
off with hood and cowl—stand forth as ye are and
raise the shout—Live the Ladye Annabel. Live
the Queen!”

“Live the Ladye Annabel”—the shout rang
pealing to the tower-roof—“Live the Queen!”

It was like magic!

Down fell hood and cowl, down fell sable vestments
and midnight robes, and there disclosed
in the light of the flaming brand, stood the prince
in his jewelled robes, the knight in surcoat of
glittering velvet, the lord in his gay doublet, the
merchant in his silken tunic, the peasant in coat
of serge, the priest arrayed in sacerdotal white,
glittering with the sacred insignia of gold, the
scholar in his flowing gown of sable, all stood
there, rising stately erect in the light, proud representatives
of their various classes, types of the
Gothic Man[2] , however named, or styled, all joined
in the holiest cause on earth, the freedom of their
native land, lifting up their hands and voices in
one wild burst of enthusiasm, as they hailed the
Ladye Annabel, Queen of Florence, chosen by the
people, chosen by the lords, chosen by the priests,
chosen by God!

A strange smile of delight stole over the lovely
face of the Ladye Annabel, as standing calm and
erect, her blue eyes was fixed on the vacant air,
with the gaze of one entranced by some vision of
far-off bliss.

“We shall meet again”—she said and smiled—
“Oh joy, we shall meet again!”

“Buried alive—ho, ho!” shrieked the ancient
man, in a low chaunting voice—“Ha—ha! The
stone rolls back—I have the brand, and then—ho,
ho, hurrah! Buried alive!”

11. CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.
THE BURIED ALIVE.

THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRONICLE, LEADING
THE WAY THROUGH THE CHAMBERS OF
SLEEP, AND TRANCE, AND DEATH,
SOLVES THE MYSTERIE OF THE LIFE OF
ADRIAN DI ALBARONE.

Afar through the gloom and twilight that hangs
between the visible and the unreal world, we behold
the Spirit of the Chronicle, leading us onward
to a dim and shadowy land peopled by
Dreams and thronged with Thoughts, robed in
forms of light or clad in shapes of doom. It is the
land of Death—the land of the Grave. The awful
region, where the soul, parted from its house of
clay, looks over the wide expanse of shadow, and
beholds every thought that ever visited its mortal
form, spring up into tangible being and life, now
gladdening its eternal vision with images of loveliness
and beauty, and again affrighting the pale
Spirit with shapes of ghastliness and woe.

Death—mighty and irresistible, look down
upon the cold corse, and tell us, when does thy
hand first unveil the Eternal to the eye of the
Soul—Life, thou mockery and blasphemy, gaze
thou upon the form of the Mortal Thing, and give
us to know, when does thy power cease, when
does thy victim pass from thy grasp? Ye each
dispute the possession of the Soul, upon a shadowy
battle-field, and now the victory sways
to the skeleton, and now to the thing of Flesh.
Men know this battle-field by various names, they
call it Sleep, they call it Trance, they call it
Death. First the body sleeps, then it is entranced,
then it dies. First the Soul gazes with a dim
eye upon the Eternal World, then its vision is enwrapt

and absorbed, and at last, as the clay dies, it
is all Spirit, and Thought, and Dream.

Come with us, reader, with hushed breath and
a solemn footstep come with us, while we tread
the halls of Old Death, tracing the Soul through
the chambers of Sleep and Trance, into the full
light of the AWFUL UNKNOWN!

Adrian Di Albarone drank the Bowl, and drained
it to the dregs, and as he drank the lovely face
of Annabel swam round him in wild confusion,
mingling with the dark countenance of Albertine,
and the bronzed visage of the Sworder, while
his heart seemed turning to fire, and his brain to
molten lead.

He drained the bowl to the dregs, and then
fell prostrate over the coffin, and then came a cold
and unconscious pause, when his heart, his brain,
were wrapt in forgetfulness, covering his soul
like a thick mist, or the deep darkness of midnight.
Awaking slowly from this oblivion of soul, he beheld
looking him calmly, yet fixedly in the face,
the countenance of his father, Lord Julian of
Albarone, pale as death, and livid with the hues
of corruption yet lighted by the deep glance of
those shadowy eyes, that seemed to burn in their
very sockets, like meteors seen through the dimness
of the daybreak mist. As this face so wild,
so lofty and so ghastly in its supernatural expression,
faded slowly away from the vision of Adrian,
his soul became the prisoner of mighty Dreams,
the Spirits of the Grave, who called up before his
eye, this dark and startling Mysterie.

THE MYSTERIE OF LIFE.

He stood in the courtyard of an ancient castle,
with the frown of the old walls towering over
his head, while the blaze of the festal lights
thrown from the lofty windows, gave a ruddy
light to the scene, as the bounding strains of music,
the light-hearted laugh of the reveller, or the
gay carol of the minstrel came echoing to his ear.
He looked around the courtyard, and beheld
ranged under the shadow of the ancient wall the
chariots of the great and proud, extending in long
and brilliant array, as far as eye could see, each
chariot with its panels blazing with heraldic emblazonings
boasting its gallant attendance of four
noble steeds, decorated with gay housings and
waving plumes, red, azure and snow-white in hue,
while numerous servitors, attired in liveries of
every colour and gaudy device, ran to and fro,
their shouts of boisterous merriment, mingling
with the voices of their Lords, joining in the glee
song of the banquet hall.

Ascending a massive stairway, with snow white
marble steps, and rare paintings adorning the wall;
Adrian made his way through the crowds of
feasters, passing to and fro, through the stream of
servitors bearing dainty viands to the revellers
above, and in a single moment stood within the
glare and glitter of the Festival Hall.

It was in sooth, a grand and magnificent scene.
The pillars of a lofty hall swept away from the
spot where he stood, in grand perspective, each
lofty column bearing its burden of wild flowers,
quaintly wreathed around sculptured frieze and
capital, hanging in long festoons to the floor, or
borne to and fro by the summer breeze, while the
glare of ten thousand lamps, arranged amid the
intricate ornaments of the arching ceiling, hung
along the towering columns, or pendant in the
night air, gave a dazzling light to the scene, as the
dancers went merrily over the bounding floor,
each eye gleaming with revelry, each cheek glowing
with the merriment of the hour, and the Spirit
of the Dance giving life to every step, animation
to every motion of the revellers.

Placed on the balcony above his head, the
band of minstrels filled the air with music; pillar
and column, ceiling-arch and obscure nook, gave
back the strains with redoubled echoes, until the
air seemed animated with melody, instinct with
the life of joy, while floating on the waves of
sound, the forms of dame and damsel, lord and
cavalier, seemed swimming in the atmosphere,
their eyes flashing light, their hands gaily upraised,
their voices mingling in a festal song, as they
undulated to and fro, now circling here, now
grouping there, now clustering in a crowd, and
again darting away over the floor, like a flock of
frightened birds scared by the wild swoop of the
falcon.

Adrian gazed over the scene, until his eye grew
sick with loveliness, his ears deafened by the
sounds of mirth, revelry and music, he gazed
around and marked the forms of beauty swaying
in the dance, here the blooming form of mature
womanhood, bounding amid the dancers, there
the blushing cheek of girlhood, receiving the warm
blaze of the festal lights on the velvet skin, here

soft lips and azure eyes, mingling their messages
of love, there delicate hands pressed thrillingly together,
on every side the form of a queenly dame
revealed in the light, or the soft bosom of a princely
damsel, heaving from the folds of her vestment,
on all sides beauty and grace, music and motion,
comingling their fascinations, while the heart filled
with melody, and the pulse throbbed with joy.

And as Adrian looked, with a wild thrill of delight,
he beheld one lovely form, standing apart
from the dancers, while her face of dreamy beauty
was gazing sadly over the scene, the deep blue eye
gleaming with thought, and the swelling cheek
paled by melancholy, as the strains of festival music
came to her ear. It was the Ladye Annabel!

With a wild cry of delight Adrian sprang forward,
and as he spraug, his bride turned, beheld
his face, and came swimming into his arms. Another
moment and they joined the throng of dancers speeding
gayly over the floor, their hands interlocked
while their glances mingled, and the soft whispers
of each voice, spoke of the dear memories of the
olden time.

It was when the dance swelled gayest, when the
minstrels gave forth their most joyous notes, when
all around was life and music and the waters of
joy came bubbling to the brim of every heart, that
a strange voice, deep, and whispering in its tones,
broke over the very heart of Adrain.

And at the very word, Adrian lost his bride in
the throng of dancers, and all grew dark as mid-night.
The music and the dancers, the forms of
beauty and the pillared hall, all, all were gone, and
a strange consciousness was impressed upon the
brain of Adrian, that one hundred years from the
festal night had passed away, that he had been
wrapt in slumber for a long and dreary century of
time.

THE MYSTERIE OF DEATH.

He stood in the court-yard of the ancient castle
yet again. A broad blaze of light poured from
the windows of the festal hall, while the peals of
strange and unknown music broke murmuringly
on the air. Adrian gazed around the court-yard,
with a feeling of awe, gathering heavy and dark
around his heart. There was the castle yard, the
same as in the olden time, yet not altogether the
same. Gleams of moonlight stole thro' the chinks
in the tottering walls of the court-yard, wild vines
threw their long branches from among the age-worn
stones, and the owl, like a thing of evil omen disturbed
the air with its sullen murmur. Gazing
along the court yard, Adrian beheld a strange and
ghastly spectacle. Beneath the shadow of the
dark grey walls, along the very space occupied
by the array of chariots, one hundred years before,
there extended a long line of death-cars, hearse
succeeding hearse, all draped in folds of black, with
four dark steeds, heavy with hangings of dark velvet,
attached to each chariot of the grave, while the
coachman's seat was tenanted by a grisly skeleton,
attired in the gay livery of the noble lord whom
he served in life.

With maddened steps, Adrain hastened along
the whole line of hearses, he beheld each death-car,
with its four black steeds, their heads decorated
with sable plumes, their bodies concealed by
folds of black velvet, he beheld the skeleton driver
seated on every hearse; he saw the parephenalia of
death and the grave, and as the horror grew darker
at his heart, he shouted aloud, asking in tones of
wild amazement, the cause of this fearful panorama
of woe and gloom. There came no answer to his
shout. All was silent, save the murmur of the
owl and the peals of strange music floating from
the windows of the Festal Hall.

“What means this fearful scene?” whispered
Adrian, as he seized the skeleton servitor of a
gloomy hearse by the arm—“What means the long
array of death cars?”

The skeleton extended his fleshless jaws, in a
hideous grin, and with his skeleton hand, brushed
the dust of the grave from his gay doublet
of blue and silver, and arranged the tasteful knot
of his silken sash. Still no voice came from his
unbared teeth, no answer came from his fleshless
visage.

“Fiend of hell,” shouted Adrain, “this sight will
drive me mad.”

“Nay, nay, good youth,” exclaimed a soft and
whispered voice at his very shoulder. “Be not
alarmed, 'tis but a festal scene. One hundred
years from this night we all thronged yonder dancing
hall, 'tis our pleasure, or mayhap our doom

to return to the scene of our former gaiety. I was
master of ceremonies an hundred years ago, I am
master of ceremonies ha, ha, yet once again. Will
it please ye to chose a partner?”

With a feeling of involuntary horror, Adrian
turned and beheld a Figure, clad in a gay robe of
purple, faced with snow-white ermine, holding the
rod of office in his hand, while a group of rainbow-hued
plumes, hung drooping over his brow. Adrian
dashed the plumes aside, he beheld, oh sight of
mockery, the fleshless skull, the hollow eye sockets,
the cavity of the nose, the grinning teeth, and the
hanging jaw, while the hand grasping the wand of
office, was a grisly skelton hand.

He turned from the bowing skeleton, and was
rushing away with horror, when a new wonder
fixed his attention. The master of ceremonies
waved his wand, and each skeleton driver leaped
from his hearse. Another signal and the long line
of skeletons, each attired in gay and contrasted
livery, extended their skeleton hands, and lifting
the pall on high disclosed the gloomy burden of
each death-car, the coffin draped in black, with the
heraldic plate of gold, affixed to each coffin lid. A
third wave of the wand from the master of ceremonies,
and the skeleton drivers, unscrewed each
coffin lid, and Adrian beheld the occupant of every
tenement of death, slowly rise from their last resting
place, gazing beneath the shadow of the uplifted
folds of the funeral pall, around upon the court-yard.
As they gazed, Adrain beheld each fleshless
skull, wearing the horrible grimace of death, looking
forth from beneath their gaudy head-gear, the
plumed cap, or the jewelled coronet, while their
skeleton hands, arranged the folds of their attire,
brushing the coffin dust from the gay robe, or fixing
the tarnished ruffle around the neck with a yet
more dainty grace, while the skeleton drivers, slowly
let down the steps of each hearse fashioned in
ts sable side. The last signal was given by the
master of ceremonies.

And with a low bow, each skeleton servitor extended
hishand, to receive his fair lord or ladye, his
fair young mistress or his gallant young master,
as arising from their coffin, they placed their feet
on the steps of the hearse, and slowly descended
into the court yard of the ancient castle.

“Great God, they are thronging around me,”
shouted Adrian, “skeleton after skelton, clad in the
gay costume of life, descend from the funeral hearse
wending in one ghastly throng toward the hall
door, on their way to the festal scene. Oh, ghastly
mockery! here are the forms of those who died when
young, and the trembling skeletons of those whom
death summoned when bending with the weight
of years. Here are the skeletons of warrior and
courtier, knight and minstrel. All wear glittering
costumes, all mimic the actions of life. Cavalier
takes the hand of Damosel, and Lord supports
the form of Ladye, while the fleshless jaws, extend
and grimace but speak no word. They utter a
low moaning sound like the deaf mute when he
essays to speak. 'Tis horrible, most horrible, this
ghastly array of mockery, and hark—strange peals
of music, are floating from yon lofty windows of
the banquet hall!”

And as he spoke, the spectral train disappeared
within the shadow of the hall door, and he was
left alone with the long line of hearses and the
skeleton servitors.

“So please ye, gentle sir, wilt thou not trip a
measure in the joyous dance?” spoke a voice at his
shoulder, “Lo! the peals of merry music, lo! the
hum of the dancers feet, moving merrily over the
floor. Wilt please thee to take my arm?”

Adrian turned and beheld the bowing skeleton,
Master of Ceremonies.

“I'll e'en secure thee a fair partner!” whispered
the skeleton as he led Adrian thro' the hall door
and along the massive stairway. “Look, good youth,
the paintings are somewhat tarnished, very little
tarnished since we beheld them last and, ha, ha,
well, well, such things will come to pass, the marble
steps of the staircase are cracked by the footstep
of time. This way, this way, my good youth.
Lo! we are in the festal hall!”

With a gaze of horror, Adrian beheld the hall,
whose floor he had trodden some hundred years
agone, he beheld the lofty pillars, the magnificent
arch, the balcony for the minstrels, all illumined
by the glare of pendent lamps, all, all the same,
yet still all changed, sadly and fearfully changed.
The lofty columns were decorated with evergreens,
but flowers gathered by the hand of beauty from
the wild wood glade no more adorned capital and
frieze. The ivy, green companion of old time,
clomb round the towering pillars, and swept its
canopy of leaves along the arching ceiling, while
the night-wind rustling through the worm-eaten
tapestries agitated the long tendrils of the trailing
vine with a gentle yet solemn motion.

“Lo! the dancers—ha, ha, the dancers!”

Circling and whirling, grouping and clustering,
the skeleton-band went swaying over the
floor, their gay dresses fluttering in the light,
while the ruddy lamp-beams fell quivering over
each bared brow, tinting the hollow sockets with
a crimson glow, and giving a more ghastly grimace
to the array of whitened teeth.

“Lo! the minstrels—a skeleton-band, whose
fleshless skulls appear above the lattice-work of
yon balcony. Merry music they make—clank,
clank, clank! They beat the hollow skull with
the cross-bone—clank, clank, clank! Each skeleton
minstrel waves on high a human bone, striking
it on the bollow skull—clank, clank. Clank,
clank. Clank, clank, clank!”

And as the grinning skeleton, master of ceremonies,
pointed above to the spectral minstrels,
Adrian listened to the music that echoed round
the hall. A wild clanking sound assailed his
ears, with a hollow mockery of music, while a
deep, booming, rolling sound like the echo of a distant
battle-drum broke on the air, maddening the
skeleton-dancers with its weird melody, while the
revel swelled fiercer, and the mirth grew louder,
awaking the echoes of the ancient hall with one
deafening murmur.

“Lo! the dancers divide—behold the spectacle!
On yonder side extend the lords and cavaliers, on
this the dames and damozels. They prepare for
a merry dance—will it please thee chose a partner?”

And as the skeleton spoke, he pointed to the
form of a maiden, clad in snow-white robes, who
with her face turned from Adrian, seemed absorbed
in watching the motions of the dancers.
Adrian gazed upon this maidenly form with a
beating heart, and advanced to her side.

“Behold thy partner!” cried the master of ceremonies.

The maiden turned her face to Adrian, and he
stood spell-bound to the spot with sudden horror.
Looking from beneath a drooping plume, snow-white
in hue, a ghastly skull stared him in the
face, with the orbless sockets, the cavity of the
nose, and the grinning teeth turned to glowing red
by the light of the pendent lamps. Adrian stood
spell-bound but the form advanced, flinging her
skeleton hands on high—

“Adrian, Adrian,” whispered a soft woman's
voice issuing from the fleshless skull; “Joy to me
now, for I behold thee once again!”

“I know thee not” shrieked Adrian with a voice
of fear—“I know thee not, thou thing of death!
Wherefore whisper my name with the voice of
her whom this heart loved a hundred years ago,
and will love forever? Off—off—thou mockery,
nor clutch thy skeleton arms around my neck, nor
gather me in thy foul embrace!”

“And thou lovest me not!” spoke the sad and
complaining voice of the skeleton—“Adrian, Adrian,
gaze upon me, I am thine own, thine now
and thine forever!”

“And this,” whispered Adrian, as the fearful
consciousness gradually stole over his soul—“And
this is my love—my Annabel! Death, oh ghastly
and invisible Death, couldst thou not spare even
—her!”

“Advance dames and damosels!” rung out the
words of the master of ceremonies.

And at the word, the long line of skeleton-dames
and damosels, arrayed in rarest silks,
blazing with jewels and glittering with ornaments
of gold, came swaying quickly forward, extending
their skeleton hands to their partners, who half
advanced from the opposite side of the hall, and
then they all swept back to their places, with one
sudden movement rattling their skeleton fingers
with a gesture of boundless joy, as they stood beneath
the glare of the dazzling lights.

“Advance lords and cavaliers!”

Quickly and with lightsome steps the skeletons
arrayed in costly robe and glittering doublet advanced
to the sound of the unearthly music, and
gaining the centre of the hall, sprang nimbly in
the air, performing the evolutions of the dance
with the celerity of lightning, and having greeted
their fair partners again retired to the opposite
side of the hall, uttering a low and moaning sound
of laughter as they regained their places.

“Minstrels strike up a merrier peal! Clank,
clank. Clank, clank. Clank, clank—clank!—
Merrier, merrier—louder, louder—let the old roof
echo with your peals of melody! Now gentles
advance, seize your fair partners and whirl them
in the dance!”

With one wild bound the skeletons sprang forward
from opposite sides of the hall, pairing off,
two by two, lord and ladye, cavalier and damosel,
and in a moment the whole array of revellers

swept circling round the hall, moving forward to
a merry measure, clanking their skeleton hands
on high and uttering low peals of laughter as they
whirled around the bounding floor.

Adrian gazed upon the scene in wild amazement,
while the skeleton arms of her he loved
gathered closer round his neck, and as he gazed
he became inspired with the wild excitement of
the scene, he clapped his hands on high, he joined
in the low muttered laughter, he mingled in the
mad whirl of the spectral dance.

Faster and faster, whirling two by two, their
fleshless skulls turned to glowing red by the glare
of a thousand lights, their hands of bone clanking
wildly above their heads, while the low moaning
chorus of unreal laughter echoed around the hall,
faster and faster circled the skeleton dancers, gay
doublets glittering in the lamp-beams, robes of silk
flung wavingly to the breeze, on and on with the
speed of wind they swept, these merry denizens of
the grave, pacing their march of mockery, their
dance of woe, with a ghastly mimicry of life, reality
and joy.

And as Adrian flung his arms around the skeleton-form
of his bride, gathering her to his bosom,
while thier voices joined in the moaning chaunt
of unreal laughter, the voice which he had heard
an hundred years before, again came whispering
to his ear—

“Behold the Mysterie of Life and Death! To-day
the children of men live and love, hate and
destroy. Where are their lives, their loves, their
hatreds, and their wars, in an hundred years?
Behold—ha, ha, ha! Behold the Mysterie of
their life and their death!”

THE REAL MORE TERRIBLE THAN
THE UNREAL.

All was dark. Not a ray of light, not even the
gleaming of a distant star, but deep and utter
darkness. Adrian awoke from his dream. Did
he awake to another dream, or to a reality yet
more terrible? He lay prostrate, and he felt his
limbs confined as though they were bound with
cords. He extended his hand, and it touched a
smooth panel of wood, extending along his right
side. A strange horror, to which the horrors of
his late dream were joy intense, gathered like a
deadening weight around his heart. He threw
forth his left hand, and felt a like panel of smooth
wood extending along his other side. Raising
himself slowly from his prostrate position, with
every nerve and fibre of his frame stiffened and
cramped by his hard resting place, he passed his
quivering hands along the panels of wood, and
with that insupportable horror deadening over his
heart, he felt and examined the shape of his—
Coffin!

Bowing his head between his hands, the wretched
man essayed toweep, but the fountain of his
tears was exhausted. He could not weep. And
then, as with trembling hands he examined his
emaciated face, with the cheek-bones pressing
hard against the parched skin, he beheld rising
before his soul, one ghastly idea, which would pale
the cheek of the bravest man that ever went to
battle, or chill with horror and despair, the heart
of the holiest Priest that ever offered prayers to
God, an idea to which all other horrors were as
nothing, all terrors, all fears, all deaths trifling and
insignificant—and the nameless thought, his husky
voice gave to the air in a hollow whisper—

“Buried-Alive!”

And a hollow echo returned the word “alive,
alive!”

“It comes back to my soul,” he slowly murmured,
“the scene in the chamber of the convent
—the Monk—oh, curses on the traitor—the potion,
all, all come back to me! Buried Alive! Devil
in human shape—he did not drug the bowl with
death, but with—sleep! This, this is the revenge
of the Duke, and, and Albertine was the tool of
the triple murderer! Buried Alive!” He tried to
arise from the coffin, but for a long time his efforts
were in vain. His frame was stiffened in every
sinew, and his limbs were benumbed by his long
repose. At last he stood erect upon the floor of
stone, and extending his hands, grasped the massive
walls.

“There is yet one hope,” he murmured, “there
may be some outlet from the funeral vault!”

With slow and leaden footsteps he passed
along the wall, measuring its length. It was five
paces long. The stones were all solid, massive,
and firm. His upraised hand touched the ceiling,
as it extended some three inches higher than his
head. Clutching the massive stones, he paced
along the other walls or sides of the room, with
weary and difficult footsteps, and at last traversed
the three sides, and leaning against the wall, he
endeavored to impress his wandering mind with

some definite idea of the shape and dimensions of
the vault.

“I stand in a small room, with floor and walls
of massive stone,” he slowly muttered, “it is
square in shape, and each side of the cell is
five paces in length, and somewhat more than
the stature of a man in height. The stones are
solid, and to all appearance are some three feet
thick. There is no outlet, no passage from the
vault. I am indeed—Buried, and buried alive!”

He passed with difficult steps along the fourth
wall of the vault, determined to repose his shattered
frame awhile, even though his resting place
was his coffin. In a moment measuring three
paces, he arrived at the spot where he supposed
he had left the coffin. Extending his foot to
and fro, in search of his late tenement, he was
struck with a new horror:

“It is gone—the coffin is gone!”

Words cannot picture the utter horror with
which this was spoken. All the despair that an
Angel of God might feel, when toppled from the
battlements of Heaven into the infernal abyss,
then visited the breast of Adrian Di Albarone.

“It is a mere phantasy,” he exclaimed, “I have
chanced upon the wrong side of the room.”

Again the sides of the vault were paced, and
yet the coffin was not within his reach. It was
gone from its position near the wall, and his physical
strength did not suffice to advance toward
the centre of the room.

What invisible hand was it, that removed the
Coffin? As the question was asked by the heart
of the wretched man, it found its answer in one
fearful doubt.

“And am I, in truth, within the bounds of that
fearful place, which wild Poets have fancied, and
dark-robed Monks have preached? Am I in
sooth lost, and lost forever? Is death a dream?
or an eternal succession of realities that seem but
dreams—horrors too fearful for even the damned
to believe? And this, this is—hell! I could bear
the tortures of the eternal fire, the lash of the
fiends I might defy, the lightnings of wrath
would inspire with me with some portion of the
Awful Spirit who winged their bolts of vengeance
—but this narrow cell this eternal confinement
in a place visited only by Dreams, while hunger
tortures and thirst burns, hope animates, and despair
holds but half the human heart—this, this is
too horrible. God of vengeance, give me, oh give,
the punishment of the undying worm, the torture
of the eternal flame, but spare, oh spare me—
this!”

He fell on his knees, and kissed the cold floor
as he bent his forehead against his clenched hands,
making the narrow cell all alive with his shrick—

“Spare; oh spare me—this!”

As he bowed low on the floor, a singular sound
—most singular in such a place—met his ear. It
was but a low sound, yet it was a fearful one. He
heard the deep breathing of a living creature!
It might be the echo of his own broken gasps, the
thought flashed over the mind of Adrian, and for
a moment he held his breath, and listened with all
his soul absorbed in the result. Again the deep
breathing of a human creature met his ear—

“Is it man or devil?” thus ran the thoughts of
Adrian—“Mayhap he may give me water to
quench my thirst, or mayhap he will—ha, ha,—
take my accursed life. Could I but speak—for my
voice does nought but murmur—I'd even ask him
to plunge his poignard in my heart.”

A whizzing sound disturbed the air, and at the
very instant the blow of a sword descended on the
left arm of Adrian Di Albarone, while a heavy
body fell to the floor, within two paces of the
spot where he knelt.

“The blood flows from the wound,” the glad
thought darted over the mind of the Buried-Alive,
“Would I had strength to tear the doublet-sleeve
from the arm, then I might drink my own blood.
Yet hold—the blood oozes through the gash in
the sleeve, and, and Great God! I may drink my
own blood!”

He raised the wounded arm to his mouth and
greedily drank the blood. In a moment he felt
the influence of the draught. His veins seemed
fired with new life, his brain became for the moment
calm and clear, his heart regained its vigor,
and gifted with temporary strength he arose on
his feet, grasping the sword of the unknown in
his good right hand. Another moment passed,
and with his right hand he wound a bandage of
linen, torn from his bosom, around the wounded
arm, securing it by a knot tied with the teeth and
hand.

Meanwhile he heard the sound of gasping
breath, not two paces distant from the spot where
he stood, and as he listened a deep-muttered groan
broke on his ear.

Calling all his powers of mental and physical
vigor to his aid he spoke in a faint yet determined
voice—

“Who art thou?” he exclaimed.

“Thy murderer!” was the gasping response.

“How long hast thou been in this place of
death?”

“Long—enough—to starve! Hell and devils!
I burn—thirst—starve!”

“What wouldst thou have?”

“Bread, bread! Water—I'd sell my soul for
water!”

“Wherefore didst thou strike me?”

“I thought ye a spirit—and—and—I wanted to
test your quality. Kill me, an' thou art a man of
flesh and blood—kill me, kill me!”

“Thy voice is strange and hollow, yet methinks
I remember your tones. Thy name is—Balvardo!”

“'Twas I that swore thy life away, 'twas I that
brought thee to these vaults to bury thy corse beneath
the earth— kill me, kill me!”

“Is there no opening to this vault?”

“A secret door—a passage—the spring, that
opens on the other side—the spring that shuts—
on this side. I—ha, ha, may hell seize my soul,
I buried myself alive—and kill me!”

Adrian shuddered with horror. He could hear
the gasping of the poor wretch as he struggled for
breath, he could hear the groans of his unseen
assassin; well he knew that long absence from
nourishment from food alone could lay the sworder
helpless as an infant along the floor.

And as his mind struggled with the mighty
horrors that gathered round him, his attention
was arrested by a singular circumstance. While
the hushed and whispered conversation had been
in progress between Adrian and Balvardo, the
room had been gradually growing warmer and
warmer, and at last the walls became heated, the
ceiling emitting a warmth almost insupportable,
while the confined air of the cell grew like the atmosphere
of a furnace.

Great God, what new horror is this!” shoutei
Adran. “Tell me, how hast thou existed thus
long in this vault of death, without air?”

“A well,” gasped the wretch, “centre of the
stone-room—current of air from under the earth.”

Impressed by these gasping words, Adrian advanced
slowly along the floor, avoiding the pros
trate body, and in a moment stood near the centre
of the room. He extended his foot—it touched
a substance that gave back a slight sound; it
was his coffin. Another extension of his foot,
and a whizzing sound assailed his ears, ploughing
the air far, far below his feet, then the rebound of
wood splintered to pieces on a pointed rock came
welling up from earth-hidden depths and echoed
around the room. He listened with hushed
breath for a long and weary moment. The
plunging sound of a pebble falling in water, far,
far below, came dimly and faintly to his ear, like
the pattering of the water-drop upon the age-worn
rock.

“Ha! A well, deep as the fathomless abyss,
sinks down from the centre of the room. Let
me measure its width—two good paces. The
coffin has whirled down into its bottomless depths
—I hear the splintered pieces falling in the water
far, far below. A slight current of air issues from
the well—and the heat of this vault of death grows
fiercer every moment—”

`Kill me, and then thank God thou hast strength
left to hurl thee down the dark abyss—I burn,
oh, fiend of hell, with thirst and flame I burn!”

Adrian sate him down on the edge of the well,
with his feet dangling in the abyss, and gave his
very soul to one long and painful effort of thought
Death clutched him with a thousand arms, death
was in the heated air, death came gibbering and
laughing in the form of famine, and from the very
depths of the abyss the doomed lord could fancy
he beheld the form of the Skeleton-God, with arms
outstretched to grasp his victim as he fell.

There was no hope.

He must die. Great God he must die afar
rom the voice of friend, afar from the sight of
earth, or the vision of the blue sky, he must die
by the slow gnawings of famine, the gradua
withering of fire, or by one sudden plunge into
the abyss below. He sate him down to die—his
arms were folded, and yet with an eager gesture
he held his face over the darkness of the abyss in
the nervous effort to inhale each breath of air.

He strove to compose his mind to prayer, but
the gasping of the wretch lying near his side diverted
his attention from thoughts of God and
the better world.

“Why didst thou hate me?” he slowly asked.

“I was afraid—thou—wouldst—live to do me
wrong. Thou art revenged—I die by inches!”

The wretch groaned in very agony, and Adrian
could hear his fingers clutching convulsively along
the floor of stone.

“My God, my God,” cried the doomed lord, as
his very soul was wrung by the woe of the forsaken
wretch; “would I had one cup of water to
cool his burning tongue—”

“Ha—ha—ha! He mocks me with the name
of water! Tell me, thou fiend, is he not revenged?”

“The heat grows fiercer—the air of this vault
is turning to fire! He gasps for breath. Man
give me thy hand. Let me drag thee near the
well—the freshning air may cool the fire in thy
heart and veins.”

And extending his hands through the darkness,
with his body inclined to a level with the pavement,
he sought the form of the famine-striken
sworder. He grasped the hands of the wretch;
the fingers were thin and wasted, resembling the
bones of a skeleton rather than the hands of a
living man. Slowly and with a careful motion
Adrian dragged the dying man along the pavement,
he laid his head on his knee, as he sat on
the verge of the well, and passed his hand over
the massive brow of his assassin. He shuddered
in the very act. Clear and distinct, like the unbared
skull of the grave, the harsh outline of the
withered brow, pressed against his hand, and he
could feel the eye sunken far in its socket, and
the cheeks hollowed by the touch of famine.

“I feel the fresh air on my brow,” gasped Balvardo;
“my feet are withering with heat, and
mine hands burn! Oh fiend of hell—I see a
fountain, a cool and showery fountain—the clear
waters are streaming over pebbled stones, and
the green moss is wet with the sparkling drops.
Hist! I will crawl to the fountain side, I will bury
my face in the waters—ha, ha, ha, I will drink, I
will drink! Fiend, fiend—curses on thee, thou
hast changed the waters to blood!”

He uttered a wild yell of horror, and the vault
of the dead gave back the echo—“Blood, blood!”
while Adrian passed his hands over the beetle-brow
of his murderer, and parting the matted hair
aside held the famine-eaten face in the full current
of the subterranean air.

All was dark as chaos ere the fiat of God spoke
worlds into being, yet here was a spectacle that
the angels of His throne, veiling their awful
faces before the Presence, might gaze upon even
through the darkness, and gaze with tears of joy.
Here was the assassin, the sworder, the false-witness,
and the foe, resting in the arms of the man
whose body his oath had given to the doomsman
and the wheel, whose footsteps he had tracked
like the bloodhound snuffing the footprints of his
victim, fierce, unrelenting, and hungering after
blood, here was the wretch who had borne him to
this vault, placed his body in the house of death,
consigned him to the famine and the fire, the
nameless horror and the agony that the cheek
grows livid to name, here was the man who had
buried him alive, and yet he held him in his arms,
fanned his withered face, and brought the fresh
air to his parched lips and burning brow. It was
as the sworder had gaspingly uttered a fierce revenge,
and yet such vengeance as the Man of the
Cross, the God shrined in flesh, would have taken
on his most blood-thirsty foe.

The end drew nigh. The moments, those moments
of horror, which seemed lengthened to
years, dragged on with steps of lead, and the room
grew like a furnace, the walls gave forth an intolerable
heat, the ceiling was rapidly becoming a
canopy of invisible fire, while the air changed to
unseen flame, began to burn into the flesh of Adrian,
as the wretch in his arms writhed and
writhed in helpless agony.

“Water—water—water!” gasped the Sworder.

A thought flashed over the mind of Adrian.

“There may be water in this well—a fountain
may spring bubbling from its depths, while we perish
on the brink! The way is deep and dark—a
single misplaced grasp or foothold, and my body
goes whirling to the abyss below; yet I am urged
on by a power I cannot name—I will descend the
well!”

A moment and the head of Balvardo lay on the
pavement of the stone-room, while the body of
Adrian hung swinging in the abyss, as, with his
hands grasping the projecting stones, he began that
fearful descent of danger and of death.

“I go to bring thee water!” he shouted in the
ear of the famished wretch—“I go to bring thee
water for thy burning tongue and brow.”

“Then, then take—this—” was the gasping response,
and Adrian felt a substance of metal pressed

against his brow by an extended hand; “'twill
hold the—the water, or, ha, —the blood!'

Hanging over the abyss by the grasp of one
trembling hand, Adrian seized the metal substance
with the other. It was a goblet, a goblet of gold,
embossed with strange shapen flowers, and heraldic
insignia, and as Adrian placed the vessel within the
confines of his doublet, a shudder of horror caused
his frame to quiver over the unknown void. It
was the goblet of the Red Chamber.

First grasping a pointed stone with one hand,
then inserting his foot in a crevice of the masonry,
then clutching another stone with the other hand,
while his remaining foot rested in another crevice,
he slowly began the fearful descent of the well.

“This then is the foul den of torture, built by the
tyrants of Florence, long, long ago!” The thought
crossed his brain. “The well hath been fashioned
by the tools of the mason, yet the damp has worn
deep hollows between the rugged stones. Hark!
he uttered the involuntary exclamation, “a stone
has fallen from my grasp—I hear no sound—none,
none! The abyss may be without bottom or
depth. Hist! a hollow murmur breaks the silence
of the air, far, far, below—the stone has sounded the
depth of the well!”s.

“Water, water—men or devils, give me water!”
the shrieking tones of the wretch in the stone-room
came faintly to his ear. “Ha, ha! Thanks, thanks—
they hand me a cup, a cup of good, clear water,
and I drink—oh, horror, horror,—it turns to
blood!”

With every nerve quivering, his hand trembling
as he grasped the stones, his foot shaking with a
nervous tremor as it sought the crevice which might
give it momentary support, Adrian continued his
terrible descent, until some twenty yards of the
subterranean well rose above his head, while the
low moans, the piercing shricks, and the hollow
laughter of the Sworder came fainter, and yet more
faint to his ear.

Extending his foot in search of a crevice, he was
astonished to find it resting on a solid rock, that
hung jutting over the abyss, at a point where the
well, diverging from its perpendicular course, made
a slight inclination to the opposite side. Grasping
the rugged stones with the eager grasp of his trembling
hands, Adrian hung swinging over the abyss,
as with extended feet, he examined the formation
of the well at this particular point, and tested the
extent of the jutting rock.

He looked over his shoulder, and a wild thrill of
surprise ran over his frame.

“Mine eyes burn with famine,” he slowly murmured;
“they deceive me! Great God they mock
me with a wild dream—I fancy the well grows
lighter and lighter—but 'tis a dream, a mocking
dream!”

As he spoke, a cold substance pressed against the
palm of his right hand as it grasped the stone—it
moved and writhed, while a hissing sound broke on
the ear. Two points of flame, like minute yet intensely
brilliant fire coals, glared before the very
eyes of Adrian, and as the hissing grew louder, he
found that a vile serpent wriggled between the fingers
of his right hand.

With a sensation of unutterable disgust, he suspended
his body by the left hand, and dashed the
monster down the abyss with one quick motion of
his hand. The impulse with which he flung the
serpent from his grasp, caused his body to quiver
and tremble over the abyss, while the sinews of
the left hand seemed bursting from the skin, as
with the nervous grasp of despair, the doomed
lord strove to recover the stone lately clutched by
the other hand. With one wild sweep he regained
his grasp, springing heavily on the jutting rock in
the action, while a deep rumbling sound disturbed
the silence of the well. Another moment passed.
Well was it for Adrian that he had refrained from
trusting to the rock for support. The massive
stone slowly swung to and fro, trembling over
the depths of the well, and then with a crash like
thunder, went whizzing down the abyss. Up, up,
from the fathomless depths, thundering and shrieking,
arose the deafening echoes, yelling like spirit-voices
in the ear of the trembling man, as he swayed
to and fro over the blackness of the void. It
was a moment ere Adrian might recall his wandering
thoughts. He looked over his shoulder, he
gazed upon the opposite side of the well. God of
Mercy, was it a dream, a phantasmal creation of
fancy, a mocking delusion of his crazed brain?
There, before his very eyes, gilding the opposite
side of the wall, a golden space, large as the human
hand, shone in his very face.

“It is the light of day!” muttered Adrian, as his
heart rose to his very throat; “it is, it is the light
of day!”

“Ha, ha, ha! water!” the shriek came yelling
from the room far, far, far above—“water, water!”

Grasping the stones below, Adrian descended

another yard, when a ray of light shone on his face
from a crevice in the wall of the well to which he
hung, trembling with a new joy, quivering in
every nerve with a new life. He thrust his right
hand into the hollow of the crevice, and as a large
flat stone fell echoing before him, a blaze of light
streamed through the wide aperture into the darkness
of the abyss.

“I stand within a rock-bound passage!” exclaimed
Adrian' “'tis narrow as the grave, narrow as a
coffin, yet twenty yards beyond I see the light of
day! Great God give me strength; do not, do not
fail me now! Streagth, a little strength, and I may
yet be saved!”

Prostrate along the floor of the narrow passage,
which the falling of the stone had disclosed, he
turned his body, and, thrusting his face into the
gloom of the well, once more gazed far, far above.

“Murderer that he is, I will not desert him!” he
cried; “he has been my comrade in the living
tomb—he shall be my comrade in the light of God's
own day!”

No sooner did the words pass his lips, than a
shriek of intense horror, came yelling down the
abyss, a mass of red fire crowned the summit of the
well, and hot cinders, and burning coals swept
through the darkness of the void, hissing by the
very face of Adrian, and marking their flight with
long lines of streaming flame. Adrian withdrew
his head from the well and listened.

A low moan, a choaking groan, and then a succession
of yells, resounded through the void. Then
the crackling of flames, then the falling of age cemented
masonry; then a wild shriek, and then a
voice of horror—

“I burn, I burn! oh fiend of hell, I burn!”

The air was cloven by the rushing of a falling
body, and thundering down the well, with arms
outspread, with his face all crushed and blackened,
stamped with a look of agony that might never be
forgotten, Balvardo was for a moment disclosed by
the light shining through the aperture, before the
very eye of Adrian, and then there was a whirling
noise, followed by a heaving rebound, and then all
was still.

The soul of Balvardo, the Sworder, stood beside
the soul of his master in the judgment halls of the
Unknown.

“Away, away!” shouted Adrian, maddened by the
sight of that ghastly face; “away from this earth-hidden
hell! Strength, my God, oh give me
strength, and I may yet be saved.”

Creeping on hands and knees, he sped along the
subterranean passage, the light growing brighter at
every step, and at last the twenty paces were left
behind, he crawled from the rock, he stood in the
open air.

His voice failed him, he gazed around. Far,
far above him, ascended the whitened steep on
which the Convent was reared, far, far above him,
he beheld the blue sky, tinted with the glow of
the dying day, he beheld the platform rock and
the frowning tower, wrapt in clouds of lurid smoke,
while tongues of forked flame, swept up to the
very azure, turning the glow of the setting sun to
bloody red.

He stood on the side of a ravine, with the deep
darkness of the wild abyss sinking far below him,
while the rugged ascent of rocks on the opposite
side rose towering before his eye, veiling the
mountain lake from his sight, and giving a faint
glimpse of the eastern sky. Dark and dreary,
tangled with gnarled shrubs, rough with rifted
rocks, a score of fathoms down, sunk the wild
abyss, with the hills, or rather the overhanging
cliff gathering around its blackness, like the sides
of one vast death-bowl of ebony.

With a wild glance, Adrian beheld the smoke
and flame, the Convent and the blue sky above,
the glimpe of the eastern horizon, the rocks
ascending on the opposite of the ravine, and the
blackness of the abyss below, and then his soul
was riveted to a spectable of horror extended at
his very feet.

There before his very eyes, a mangled carcase,
was thrown along the surface of a rugged rock,
the trunk, the limbs, the arms, the garments and
draperies of gold, all mingled in one foul mass of
corruption, while the face was buried amid a cluster
of stunted shrubs of laurel. Adrian reached forth
his hand, he raised the face, he beheld the blue
tint of corruption, the eyes lolling from their
sockets, the blackened tongue hanging from the
mouth!—

“The Duke,” he shrieked, “the Duke of Florence!”

He turned from the sight with intolerable disgust,
and as he turned, he beheld appearing from
amid the shrubs, on the other side of the small
platform of sand on which he stood, a bared arm
flung along the earth grasping a keen and slender-bladed
dagger, with a grasp that death and corruption
could not unclose.

Adrian sprang forward, he unwound the dagger
from the grasp of the hand, he beheld a
parchment scroll secured around the haft of the
glittering steel. He tore the scroll from the dagger,
he flung it open to the light, and beheld these
words written in a fair unwavering hand—

“Brothers of the Invisible! When this hand
that writes these words is cold in death, the scroll
of Albertine the Monk, will tell the story of his
vengeance on the Tyrant-Duke. The midnight
hour is now past—I go to plunge the dagger of
the Holy Steel in the Heart of the Doomed. Ask
ye for the Heir of Albarone! Three hours ago, ere
the Duke arrived in the valley, I bade him farewell
forever. Midnight came and I learned that
the Son of Lord Julian, was about to meet his
death in the vaults of the Convent. One way
of rescue alone remained. Protected by my supposed
love for the Duke, I blinded the eyes of
the assassin, and offered to do his work of death.
Then mingling a potion, which would minister
sleep,—not death,—I gave it to Lord Adrian—
even now his bride gathers his slumbering form
to her embrace in the vaults of the Convent—even
now the assassin waits to bear the body to the
grave. One hour from this ye will arrive in the
valley, and your eyes will behold the slumbering
form of your Prince—the lifeless Corse of the
Tyrant! I go to finish—”

The scroll broke off abruptly, yet there was sufficient
written to fill the heart of Adrian with an
emotion of joy, he had never felt before.

He sprang among the bushes, he dashed the
laurel leaves, he turned the blackening face of the
mangled corse to the light. He clasped his hands
on high in silent prayer, while thick burning tears
fell streaming over the face of Albertine the Monk.

Meanwhile gathered along the green sward of
a level meadow, extending from the Convent gates,
to the south of the mountain lake, a band of gallant
warriors, reined their war-steeds along the
turf, their upraised spears marking their numbers,
by long lines of glittering light, while a thousand
banners waved streaming in the sunset air, and
the peal of bugle, and the stirring notes of the
trumpet went echoing upward to the old convent
walls wrapt in smoke, lighted by giant-pillars of
blood red flame.

In front of the band of warriors, a group of noble
lords and high-born dames, plumed cavaliers
and gay-robed damosels,—all mounted on prancing
steeds, swept circling around the figure of a
fair and beautiful Ladye, whose jet-black barb,
with its watchful groom, stood reined in their
midst, while every tongue was silent, and every
eye was fixed upon the death-like paleness of the
maiden's countenance, contrasting strangely with
the gorgeous robes of purple and gold that drooped
round her young and lovely form.

Her head bowed slowly on the neck of her
steed, and the tears of a never-dying grief came
gushing between the fair and delicate fingers that
strove to veil her face. She wept, the fair Ladye
Annabel, whose steed was about to spring forward
in the triumphal procession, that would soon give
Florence its lovely queen; the coronet was on her
brow, the swords of a thousand warriors were at
her beck, and yet she wept.

Suddenly a wild murmur ran through the warrior-throng.
Uprising in the light of the burning
Convent,—that dark haunt of blood and awe,
now toppling to its foundation, a grey rock, its
base concealed by stunted shrubs, while its brow
was turned to the flame-beams, attracted the gaze
of every eye, as a strange spectacle hushed the
whispers of every voice.

A hand, ghastly and white, was thrust from
behind the rock, lifting a goblet of gold in the
light of the setting sun. Deep muttered whispers
broke along the warrior-throng, every voice spoke
of some new omen crowning the horrors of the
convent during the last hour of its existence, and
the murmurs of the lords and ladies clustering at
her side, attracted the attention of the Ladye Annabel.
She slowly turned, she gazed upon the
uplifted hand with the goblet of gold rising above
the verge of the grey rock—not more than twenty
paces from her side—she gazed in wonder
and in awe. And as she gazed, a wan and ghastly
face appeared above the rock, and a wasted
and trembling form, clad in garments of price all
soiled and torn, stood on the verge of the massive
stone, flinging the goblet wildly aloft, as a peal
of maniac laughter came thrilling to the maiden's
ear.

It was a solemn and impressive scene!

There swept the knightly host along the green
meadow, their spears gleaming on high, there
darkened the smoke and lightened the blaze of the
burning convent, there the calm lake extending

rippleless along its mountain-shores, gave its silent
bosom to the crimson glare of the flame,
and there standing erect upon the brow of the
grey rock, his slender form boldly and clearly relieved
by the background of the convent walls, the
light of the flame, the beams of the setting sun;
Adrian Di Albarone, crazed by famine, and maddened
with new-risen joy, shook wildly aloft the
Goblet of Gold, while his maniac laugh broke
echoing on the evening air.

CHAPTER THE LAST.
THE CATHEDRAL OF FLORENCE.

THE TASK OF THE WIERD SPIRIT IS DONE
—THE CURTAIN OF FATE FALLS
OVER THE TRAGEDY OF THE
HOUSE OF ALBARONE.

Joy to Florence now, oh joy to the fair city in
her streets and thro' her lordly halls, joy to the
prince of the palace and the peasant of the cot,
joy to the mountain and the dell, joy to the hill
and the valley, joy to the silvery river, joy to the
homes of men, joy to the shrines of God, joy, joy,
forever joy!

The Duke, the people's Duke is come to reign!
Baptized by trial, chosen by the People, crowned
by the Invisible, anointed by God, he comes to
reign!

There are light voices filling the air, there are
soft steps tripping thro' the lordly halls, there are
costly draperies sweeping over marble floors, there
are strains of music awaking the echoes of ancient
domes, there are processions thronging the streets
in all the pomp of crucifix and banner, gallant
knights ride to and fro, shaking the glitter of their
snowy plumes aloft, the poor creep from their dens
of want, the mighty pour from their homes of pride,
the sordid miser forgets his money bags, the merchant
his wares of cost, the scholar his musty
book, the bravo his knife, the children of misery
their care, and all, aye all, come thronging to the
high Cathedral of Florence, where the solemn
priest wili, ere an hour, amid the glad shouts of
thousands, anoint Adrian Di Albarone, Lord Duke
of Florence, and crown his fair bride, the Ladye
Annabel, with the coronet for which Aldarin gave
his soul.

It is morning, glad and joyous morning, the
calm azure arches over the fair city, gorgeous with
temple-dome and palace tower while the gay parties
hasten to the grand Cathedral, anxious to behold
the Duke and his fair bride.

THE POSTILLION AND THE BUXOM DAMSELS.

And there tripping gayly along were three peasant
damsels, arrayed in their holiday attire, and with
them a bow-legged youth attired as a postillion,
strutted on his way with extended stride and lofty
air, which seemed to say, that all this parade and
show, was made for his sole benefit and especial
amusement.

“Sancta Maria! How he trips it along!” thus
spoke the tallest of the damsels “beshrew, but Sir
Francisco is wondrous proud, since he was knighted
by the Duke!”

“How! knighted!” cried the damsel of the merry
black eye.

“What mean you?” cried the red-haired maiden,
and the bow-legged postillion looked over his shoulder
with a vacant stare.

“Was he not honored with the collar, the hempen
collar?” cried the tall-maiden. “Did not that
rough soldier of the Count Di Albarone that was,
the Duke of Florence that is now, did not Rough
Robin knight Sir Francisco with his own hands?
How dull you are!”

“Ugh!” exclaimed the postillion shrugging his
shoulders. “What unpleasant things you do remember!
And yet the Duke said something very
flattering, when he directed the rope to be taken
from my neck. He said, says he, he said, I tell
you—that I—

“Was a little, impertinent, insignificant, busy-body,”
exclaimed Theresa, laughing. “But Francisco
what mean you to do with the reward, you
received from the Duke that was murdered, eh?
Francisco?”

“Yes, yes, what are you going to do with all
that gold?” cried Dollabella, and the three gathered
around the youth with evident interest, expressed
in each face in the glittering eyes and the parted
lips.

“Why Theresa, Dollabella, and Loretta,” answered
the postillion, looking slowly round, with
an expression of the deepest solemnity, “I mean
to—that is, I intend—by'r Ladye the Cathedral
bell is ringing. Come along, girls!”

“Ha, ha, ha! 'Tis a fair day and a bright,”
laughed a shrill voice at the elbow of Francisco,
“Florence is full of joy and e'en I, I am glad.”

A tremor of fear ran round the group as they

beheld the form of the speaker, the distorted face,
the wide mouth, the large rolling eyes, and
the deformed figure with the unsightly hump on
the shoulders, giving a half-brutal appearance
to the stranger, while from lip to lip, ran the whisper—

“The Doomsman, the Doomsman!”

“Aye, aye, the Doomsman! And why not pray?
Dare not the Doomsman laugh? Ha, ha, ha!
What a fine neck thou hast for the axe, good youth;
or now that I think o't it would stretch a rope
passing well. 'Tis a fine day, good folk, and I'm
hastening to the Cathedral, to behold the crowning
of one of my children, that is Children of the
Axe.”

“Thy children?” echoed Francisco, aghast with
fear. “Can a shadow like thee, have children?”

“Children o' th' axe, boy. I' faith if all the world
had their own, I'd have thy neck—a merry jest, nothing
more boy, ho, ho, ho! Do'st see these fingers.”

“Vulture's talons rather!”

“These, these were round his royal throat, while
the lead, the melted lead waited for his princely
body, and the wheel of torture was arrayed for his
lordly repose. Ha, ha, ha! I would see him
crowned, by the fiend would I! But come boy,
thou knowest somewhat of city gossip, tell me, does
this Sir Geoffrey O' Th' Longsword, stabbed by
his own son, a good boy, he, he, he, does he yet
live?”

“Have not prayers been offered in all the Cathedrals
for the miracle?”

“The miracle? Enlighten me, good youth!”

“Hast thou not heard, how the force of the blow
was swayed aside, by a piece of the true wood o'
th' cross, which the old soldier had worn over his
heart for years? A miracle, old shadow, a miracle!”

“Nay, nay, call me not shadow, I'll never darken
thy way to the gallows. But tell me, fair sir
did not the dagger pierce the old man's heart?”

“It grazed the heart, but did not pierce it. Any
city goosip might tell thee this, old thunder
cloud!”

“And so the old man lives?”

“He doth! Thou art wondrous sorry that he
still breathes the air, I warrant me?”

“Nay, nay, good youth. I bear Sir Geoffrey
no harm, but dost see—the wheel, the axe and the
boiling lead, all were ready for the boy Guiseppo,
and, and, but 'tis the will of heaven! I can bear
disappointment, he, he, he, in all matters, save in
one. Thy neck boy, ha, ha, ha, the Doomsman's
fingers itch for thy neck!”

And while the peasant-group, the three buxom
damsels, and the light-brained postillion, shrunk
back from the touch of the distorted being with
disgust, and stood thrilled with the fear of his words
of omen, the Doomsman glided away, mingling
with the vast crowd who thronged the streets of the
wide city.

THE CORONATION.

Standing upon the throne of gold, attired in the
purple robes of a prince, Adrian Di Albarone, glanced
with a brightening eye, and a swelling heart,
upon the gorgeous scene around him, and then his
glance was fixed upon the fair and lovely maiden
by his side, whose eyes of dreamy beauty were
downward cast, while a soft flush deepened the
hue of her cheek, as she seemed to shrink from the
gaze of the vast multitude, extending over the pavement,
and along the aisles of the cathedral.

Adrian cast his eyes upon the throng around the
throne, and there stood bold Robin, the stout Yeoman,
attired in a garish appareling, which he
seemed to like not half so well as his plain suit of
buff, defended by armour plates of steel; and there
his locks of grey, falling on his knightly surcoat,
emblazoned on the breast with the red cross of the
crusaders, stood the brave Sir Geoffrey O' Th'
Longsword, pale and worn with the traces of
his late wound, attended on either side by the gallant
esquires Damian and Halbert, each with a
grim smile on his scarred face, as they grimly surveyed
the pomp and show glittering along the
cathedral aisles.

Standing at the back of his father, his eye downcast,
and his cheek pale with deep and bitter
thoughts, Guiseppo seemed musing on the fearful
blow, which had well nigh burdened his soul with
the nameless crime. He said nothing, nor spoke
of the pomp around him, but with folded arms
stood silent and apart.

Standing beside her queenly cousin, with a
group of bower maidens clustering around, the
damosel Rosalind glanced from side to side with a
merry twinkle of her eye, and look of maidenly
wonder, as the glare and the glitter, the pomp and
the show of the scene broke on her vision, and
came thundering on her ear.

Amid the throng of noble dames, towered the
stately form of the Lady Di Albarone, with a proud
smile on her lip, and a haughty glance in her eye,

as she looked with all a mother's pride upon her
son's advancement to his right of birth and honor.

And higher grew the sound of pipe and cymbal,
mingling with the roll of drum, and the peal of
trumpet, and deeply booming along the arches of
the cathedral, came the voice of the swelling organ
seeming as though some spirit of light had trained
the mountain thunder to the strains of harmony,
now soft and gentle, now awful, now sublime, and
ever filling the soul with high and glowing
thoughts.

And now the bright sunbeams came flaunting
through the arched windows of the cathedral, and
every eye was fixed upon the throne, and every
voice was hushed in expectation, as the moment of
the approaching ceremony drew uigh.

A murmur ran along the aisles of the cathedral,
and it deepened into a cry—

“He comes, the holy abbot of St. Peter's of
Florence!”

And every sound was hushed, as the venerable
man of heaven raised the golden coronet, set with
rarest jewels, and the sceptre of ivory from the
altar of the cathedral, and ascending the steps of
the throne he was received by Adrian Di Albarone
with lowered head, and bended knee.

“Sound heralds, sound!”

And then the heralds, standing one on either
side of the throne, gave a blast loud and long to the
air, and proclaiming the lineage, the title, and the
birth of Lord Adrian Count Di Albarone, they
flung, each man, his glove upon the marble floor,
challenging all the world to say aught against the
right of descent claimed by the duke elect. There
came no answer to the challenge.

“Lord Adrian Count Di Albarone,” thus spoke
the abbot; “in the name of God, in the name of
Christ and St. Peter, and by the rule of the Holy
Vicar of Christ upon earth, I proclaim thee Sover
eign Lord of Florence, the city and the field, the
mountain and the stream! I bestow upon thee
the golden coronet—wear it with glory and honor.
I place this sceptre of ivory in thy grasp—wield it
with justice and truth. Adrian, Lord Duke
of Florence!”

As thus he spoke, with his mind glowing with
the memory of the day when he had mingled in
the battle fray, side by side, with the sire of the
gallant youth who knelt at his feet, the tones of
the abbot's voice rose high and clear, and with eyes
upraised to heaven, and outspread hands, he seemed
to implore a benizen upon the bridal pair.

One shout, long and deep, ascended from the
multitude. Adrian arose upon his feet, and lifted
the gorgeous coronet from his brow. He took the
fair lady Annabel by the hand, and as the blushes
grew deeper on her cheek, he impressed upon her
brow a kiss that told at once of the love of the
youth for his mistress, and the admiration of the
knight for his fair ladye.

He extended his hand, and in an instant the
coronet rested upon the brow of the lovely bride.
The vast cathedral roof echoed with the thunder
shout of myriad voices, the strains of the swelling
music filled the air, at each pause of the loud and
deafening cries of joy; the warriors flung their
swords in the air, the fair dames and damozels
awved their snow white hands on high, and one
universal gush of joy hailed the fair Annabel Ladye
Duchess of Florence!

“My own fair bride,” Adrian whispered, “the
night has passed, and our morning cometh.”

THE HOMAGE.

While her heart yet throbbed with indefinable
emotion, Adrian led his gentle bride to the ducal
chair, and side by side, they awaited the homage
of the noble throng of lords and ladies, knights and
damozels.

Many a noble lord, and many a haughty dame,
advancing to the throne, bowed low at the feet of
the Duke Adrian, and kissed the fair hand of the
Duchess Annabel.

At last a man of lofty stature, and commanding
port, with locks of grey hair falling back from a
stern, determined face, paled by disease, and wan
with thought, and ascending the steps of the throne,
sank on one knee before the duke.

“Rise, brave knight,” exclaimed Adrian; “rise
brave Sir Geoffry O' Th' Longsword; rise lord
keeper of our castle Di Albarone. Thy youth has
been wasted fighting for the cause of the late venerated
lord; thy age shall be rendered calm and
peaceful within the walls of the castle, with whose
brave soldiers thou hast so often gone forth to the
ranks of battle.”

And placing the baton of command within the
hand of the brave knight, he raised him from his
kneeling position. Sir Geoffrey o' th' Longsword
replied not to the Duke with words of flattery.—
One glance of the eye, and one grasp of the hand,
was all the answer that greeted the Duke Adrian.

Then came Robin the Rough, ascending the
throne with a half-solemn air, as though he were
afraid of soiling the steps of gold. With a true
soldier's salute he drooped on one knee, awaiting
the command of the Duke to rise.

“Arise, bold Robin,” said Adrian, unsheathing
the sword that hung at his side—“Arise—no longer
Robin the stout yeoman, but Sir Roberto Di
Capello, Lord of the Lands of Capello!”

No sooner did bold Robin feel the sword of the
Duke slightly pressed upon his shoulder conferring
knighthood, than he sprang upon his feet, and
looked around with surprise and wonder expressed
in his distended eyes and parted lips.

“Hast any boon to ask, Sir Roberto?” exclaimed
the Duke.

“Why, an' it please thee, my Lord Duke,” answered
Robin, recovering from his surprise—
“Why an' it please thee, I have a boon to ask.
I had much rather follow thee to battle in my old
attire, in my coat of buff and my armour of steel.
I like not this dainty trim.”

With a smile the Duke granted his characteristic
request, and as the bold soldier retired, Adrian
waved his hand to one who stood in the throng
around the throne. From the ancient chronicle
we gather these words concerning.

“THE ROMANCER.

A man attired in a tunic of dark velvet reaching
to his knee, and with long locks of dark brown
hair falling beneath the velvet cap of the scholar,
now came forward and ascended the throne. In
stature he was of the middle height, slim and well
formed, with a face marked by irregular features,
full cheeks, a mouth with large lips, while his
hazel eyes, looking from beneath dark eyebrows,
warmed with the inward soul.

“Most famed Romancer”—thus spoke the Duke
to the person who knelt before him. “Most
famed Romancer of the North, wear this signet
for my sake. Men shall long keep in memory
the wondrous Histories which thy pen, full of
fancy, hath pictured. Add now to the number
the Historie of the House Di Albarone. Take
this ring as an earnest of future bounty. Thou
shalt away with me to the Holy Land, thou shalt
chronicle the wars of the Christian and the Paynim.
Ericci Il Normani arise!”

Thus spoke the flattery of the Duke to the
humble Romancer, thus he bade me indite my
poor Historie, which, should it ever outlive this
century, will serve at least to give some small
glimpses of the crimes, the glory and the fame of
the House Di Albarone.”

And now, with his beaming eye no longer
glowing with gaiety, but dark and thoughtful,
came the Page Guiseppo; and side by side with
the damsel Rosalind he knelt and did homage to
his Lord. But why tell of Guiseppo and Rosalind—Is
not the story of their fortunes found in
the Historic of the Page and the Damsel?

THE SPECTRE FATHER.

The Duke turned to the vast multitude. He
raised his sword on high. “Witness ye gallant
knights, witness ye fair dames, I now swear upon
the hilt of my sword, that the morrow's sun shall
behold me and my followers bound for Palestine,
there to fight for the Holy Sepulchre. And so
help me God and St. George!”

And there stood Adrian, with his ducal robe of
purple thrown back from his shoulders, his right
hand pressing his sword hilt to his lip, his left
arm raised to the heavens, while his eyes flashed
with all the enthusiasm of his soul.

The cry ran like a lightning flash through the
temple, every voice was for Palestine, every tongue
shouted—“on—on to the rescue—God for the
Holy Sepulchre!” Sir Geoffrey o' th' Long-sword
raised his sword on high, the Ladye Annabel,
fired by the holy feeling of the moment, lifted
the cross of ebony depending from her neck to
her lips, as a thunder-shout arose from the multitude,
and while all was exultation and joy, bold
Robin the stout yeoman flung the broad banner of
the Duke to the air, and the bright sunbeams
shining upon the azure folds gilded with dazzling
light the blazonry of gold, and every eye beheld
the armorial bearings of the Lord of Florence,
with the words in letters of gold—

“It is past, the dark and fearful night,” again repeated
Adrian, as he gazed over this scene of wild
enthusiasm; “Lo! the morning cometh!”

As he spoke the cathedral was suddenly darkened,
a thick mist filled the Church, and one man
could scarce distinguish the form of another by his
side.

A wild, wild laugh sounded to the very roof of
the cathedral, it rung upon the senses of the vast
multitude, and was echoed from every aisle of the
solemn temple.

“What means this darkness?” Adrian shouted,
drawing his sword; “Hist! I hear a footstep. It
passes over the throne. It passes between me and
thee Annabel; yet I see no form, I hear no voice.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” The wild laugh again arose upon
the dark and twilight air.

“He stands by my side!” shrieked the lady Annabel;
“It is he—it is my father!”

And she trembled with affright, and leaned
shrinking upon the arm of the duke, while her fair
blue eyes dilated with a strange expression, and
her glance was fixed in one wild dread look upon
the darkened air.

“It is done!” exclaimed a voice breaking from
the vacancy of the air; “It is done! Fair daughter
of mine, thou art Duchess of Florence—the
coronet is on thy brow—all is fulfilled!”

“Holy Mary save me!” shrieked Annabel in a
low whispered tone; “an icy hand is pressed upon
my brow. It is like the hand of death.”

And as there she stood upon the throne of gold,
her form upraised to its full height, her eye fixed
on vacancy, and her fair white hands trembling
with an unreal fear, a feeling of terrible and overwhelming
AWE overshadowed each heart, and
paled each face, while the solemn tones of the spirit
voice broke on the ear of the lovely bride.

“In life thou wert my ambition, and in the solemn
walks of death, amid the fear that may not be
named, and the gloom that may be dared, thy father,
maiden, is still the evil angel of all who wish thee
harm, or do thee wrong.”

A low moaning sound broke on the air, and
again the words of the spirit voice came to the
Lady Annabel—

“The last behest of thy father—the parchment
scroll, and the phial of silver confided to thy hands
—hast thou obeyed the dying words of Aldarin?”

The cheek of the Lady Annabel became pale as
death, and her eye grew bright with supernatural
lustre. The hurried words of the scroll, written in
the blood of the doomed man, the fearful request,
the dark hints at the re-vivification of his mortal
body, by the action of the water of life, all to be
accomplished by the devotion of his daughter—
flashed over her brain at the moment, when the
gloom of the presence of the dead, darkened the joy
of the living, and the Ladye turned to Adrian, and
murmured with a whisper of hollow emphasis—

“The corse, Adrian, the corse of my father—
where doth it rest?”

“It hath no place of repose on earth,” was the
solemn answer. “Given to the invisible air, the
mortal frame finds nor home, nor resting place in
sacred chapel, or in wild wood glade; but mingled
with the unseen winds, floating in the atmosphere
of heaven; on, and on forever wanders the earthly
dust of the Scholar, denied repose on earth, refused
judgment by heaven, condemned to the eternal
solitudes of the disembodied spirit; on, and on it
wanders seeking companionship with the mighty
soul of Aldarin!”

And a low and solemn voice, speaking from the
invisible air, murmured the words—“It is finished,