He whom thou seekest has sent me to lead thee to him."

Wagner did not hesitate to obey this mandate, which he felt certain was
connected with the important business that had borne him to Syracuse.
His apparel was speedily assumed; and he said, "I am ready to follow
thee, stranger, whoever thou art, and whithersoever thou mayst lead; for
my faith is in Heaven."

"Those who have faith shall prosper," observed the stranger, in a solemn
tone.

He then led the way noiselessly down the steep staircase of the inn, and
issued forth by the front gate, closely followed by Wagner. In deep
silence did they proceed through the dark, narrow, and tortuous streets,
leaving at length the town behind them, and then entering upon a barren
and uneven waste. By degrees an object, at first dimly seen in the
distance, and by the uncertain moonlight, which was constantly
struggling with the dark clouds of a somewhat tempestuous night, assumed
a more defined appearance, until a mass of gigantic ruins at length
stood out from the somber obscurity. In a few moments the moon shone
forth purely and brightly; and its beams, falling on decayed buttresses,
broken Gothic arches, deep entrance-ways, remnants of pinnacles and
spires, massive walls of ruined towers, gave a wildly romantic and yet
not unpicturesque aspect to the remains of what was evidently once a
vast monastic institution. The muffled stranger led the way amongst the
ruins, and at last stopped at a gate opening into a small square
inclosure formed by strong iron railings, seven feet high and shaped at
the points like javelins. Passing through the gateway, the guide
conducted Wagner into a cemetery, which was filled with the marble tombs
of the mitered abbots who had once held sway over the monastery and the
broad lands attached to it.

"You behold around you," said the muffled stranger, waving his arm
toward the ruins, "all that remains of a sanctuary once the most
celebrated in Sicily for the piety and wisdom of its inmates. But a
horrible crime, a murder perpetrated under circumstances unusually
diabolical, the criminal being no less a person than the last lord abbot
himself, and the victim a beauteous girl whom he had seduced, rendered
this institution accursed in the eyes of God and man. The monks
abandoned it: and the waste over which you have passed is now the
unclaimed but once fertile estate belonging to the abbey. The
superstition of the Sicilians has not failed to invent