p agony which had contracted his
features died away. He sprung forward with a wild cry, but the echo
alone replied. No voice but his own awoke the awful stillness,
pulseless it reigned around him. The stars glittered as brightly, the
moon shone as gloriously, and, as he held his breath, the faint and
confused murmur of the distant water-fall, and the caroling of the
night-wind in the gnarled old forest, almost seeming to be a part of
the silence, came up through the window to his ear as distinctly and
steadily as ever--every thing belied the scene he had just witnessed.
Was it a dream? He grasped his arm until it pained him--he was
awake--there was no change--all appeared as it had been. He attempted
to shake the iron bars of the lattice--they were firm in their
sockets. He groped his way to the other side of the room, passed his
hands along the walls--nothing but darkness was there. He stood where
first he had stood when he beheld the apparition--the unearthly
visitant was there no longer. He bent forward, and strained an aching
gaze--in vain; nothing underwent a change. Then he felt that he had
seen the dead--the murdered. His mind recoiled upon itself, and the
very marrow in his bones crept at the thought. He flung himself upon
his pallet, and for the hundredth time strove to sleep. Black despair
had eaten down into his very heart's core, and remorse, like an old
vulture, gnawed at his vitals; yet for a few brief, agonizing moments
he slept, but only as the fiends of hell might be supposed to sleep. A
dream, a series of change and torture, bewildering and terrible, came,
like a blight, over his spirit.

Now he felt the cold hand of death upon his brow, and his whole body
seemed to be encompassed in a mass of ice. His blood waxed thick in
its courses; his heart staggered, fluttered, gave one agonizing throb,
and for a moment ceased to pulsate; cold dews gathered on his brow,
and a stinging sensation pervaded his whole system; his eyelids
trembled, and the balls rolled, gave out a dying lustre, glazed, grew
fixed and sightless in their sockets--then came the last convulsive
and impotent contest with the King of Terrors--the groan, the gasping
breath, the half-uttered words upon the quivering lip--the
death-rattle, the soulless face, and the pulseless silence. He
recovered. Above him was a sky of livid flame, upon whose high zenith
dread darkness sat enthroned. Around him spread a shoreless ocean of
molten fire. No wav