moned him below again. Hastening after the officers, he
saw a woman bleeding on the ground. He went to her; it was his beloved
Antonia. She was dying; with a few sweet words of farewell, her spirit
passed away.

Broken-hearted, he returned. He had lost Antonia, but he was to learn
that Agnes was restored to him. The woman he had rescued was indeed his
sister, saved from a living death and brought back to life and love.

_V.--Lucifer_

Ambrosio was tortured into confession, and condemned to be burned at the
stake. Matilda, terrified at the sight of her fellow-criminal's
torments, confessed without torture, and was sentenced to be burned at
his side.

They were to perish at midnight, and as the monk, in panic-stricken
despair, awaited the awful hour, suddenly Matilda stood before him,
beautifully attired, with a look of wild pleasure in her eyes.

"Matilda!" he cried, "how have you gained entrance?"

"Ambrosio," she replied, "I am free. For life and liberty I have sold my
soul to Lucifer. Dare you do the same?"

The monk shuddered.

"I cannot renounce my God," he said.

"Fool! What hope have you of God's mercy?" She handed him a book. "If
you repent of your folly, read the first four lines in the seventh page
backwards." She vanished.

A fearful struggle raged in the monk's spirit. What hope had he in any
case of escaping eternal torment? And yet--was not the Almighty's mercy
infinite? Then the thought of the stake and the flames entered his mind
and appalled him.

At last the fatal hour came. The steps of his gaolers were heard in the
passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines,
and straightway the fiend appeared--not seraph-like as when he appeared
formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling
around his brows.

He placed a parchment before Ambrosio.

"Bear me hence!" cried the monk.

"Will you be mine, body and soul?" said the demon. "Resolve while there
is time!"

"I must!"

"Sign, then!" Lucifer thrust a pen into the flesh of Ambrosio's arm, and
the monk signed. A moment later he was carried through the roof of the
dungeon into mid-air.

The demon bore him with arrow-like speed to the brink of a precipice in
the Sierra Morena.

"Carry me to Matilda!" gasped the monk.

"Wretch!" answered Lucifer. "For what did you stipulate but rescue from
the Inquisition? Learn that when you signed, the steps in the corridor
were the steps of those who