r, when, what was it that met
his startled vision!--

VALERIA DORMIT IN PACE.

There slept in the sleep of death another victim of his perfidy, one
whom he had longed to save, one whose beauty had fascinated his
imagination, whose goodness had touched his heart. Overcome by his
emotion he flung himself on the ground, and bursting into convulsive
sobs that shook his frame, he passionately kissed the cold stone slab
on which was written the much-loved name.

"Would that I, too, slept the sleep of death," he exclaimed; "if I might
also sleep in peace; if I might seek celestial realms.... So near and
yet so far ... A great gulf fixed ... Never to see thee more ... in time
nor in eternity."

Here the drip, drip of water which had infiltrated through the roof and
fell upon the floor, jarred upon his excited nerves, and suddenly, with
a hissing splash, fell a great drop on his taper and utterly
extinguished its light. For a moment, so intense and sudden was the
darkness, he was almost dazed; but instantly the greatness of his peril
flashed upon his mind.

"Lost! Lost!" he frantically shrieked. "The outer darkness, the eternal
wailing while she is in the light of life! Well I remember now the words
of Primitius, in this very vault, as he spoke of the joys of heaven, the
pains of hell;" and in the darkness he tried to trace with his finger
the words, "DORMIT IN PACE"--"Sleeps in peace."

_"Vale! Vale! Eternum Vale!"_ he sobbed, as he kissed once more the
marble slab, "an everlasting farewell! I must try to find the
Christians, or the soldiers, or a way of escape from this prison-house
of graves."

He groped his way to the door of the vault and listened, oh! so
eagerly--all the faculties of his body and mind seeming concentered in
his sense of hearing. But "the darkness gave no token and the silence
was unbroken." Nay, so awful was the stillness that brooded over this
valley of death, that it seemed as if the motion of the earth on its
axis must be audible, and the pulses of his temples were to his tortured
ear like the roaring of the distant sea.

Venturing forth, he groped his way from grave to grave, from vault to
vault, from corridor to corridor, but no light, no sound, no hope! Ever
denser seemed the darkness, ever deeper the silence, ever more appalling
the gloom. For hours he wandered on and on till, faint with hunger,
parched with thirst, the throbbings, of his heart shaking his unnerved
frame, he fell into a m