! His heart sank within
him. Was he in a terrible dream? No, no! he had but made a mistake--had
trusted too much to his knowledge of the house, and was not where he
thought he was! He struck a light. Alas! alas! he was where he had
intended! It was her room! There was the wardrobe, but nearer the door!
Where it had stood was no recess!--nothing but a great patch of fresh
plaster! It was no dream, but a true horror!

Instinctively clutching his skene dhu, he darted to the great stair. It
must have been the voice of Arctura he had heard! She was walled up in
the chapel!

Down the stair, with swift noiseless foot he sped, and stopped at the
door of the half-way room. It was locked!

There was but one way left! To the foot of the stair he shot. Good
heavens! if that way also should have been known to the earl! He crept
through the little door underneath the stair, feeling with his hands
ere his body was through: the arch was open! In an instant he was in
the crypt.

But now to get up through the opening into the passage above--stopped
with a heavy slab! He sprang at the steep slope of the window-sill, but
there was no hold, and as often as he sprang he slipped down again. He
tried and tried until he was worn out and almost in despair. She might
be dying! he was close to her! he could not reach her! He stood still
for a moment to think. To his mind came the word, "He that believeth
shall not make haste." He thought with himself, "God cannot help men
with wisdom when their minds are in too great a tumult to hear what he
says!" He tried to lift up his heart and make a silence in his soul.

As he stood he seemed to see, through the dark, the gloomy place as it
first appeared when he threw in the lighted letter. All at once he
started from his quiescence, dropped on his hands and knees, and
crawled until he found the flat stone like a gravestone. Out came his
knife, and he dug away the earth at one end, until he could get both
hands under it. Then he heaved it from the floor, and shifting it
along, got it under the opening in the wall.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

A MORAL FUNGUS.

Spiritual insanity, cupidity, cruelty, and possibly immediate
demoniacal temptation had long been working in and on a mind that had
now ceased almost to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Every
man who bends the energies of an immortal spirit to further the ends
and objects of his lower being, fails so to distinguish; but with the
earl t