the blackest night in the thickest wood--a
pause--then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then,
an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow--two monsters
stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving
on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light.
Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst of them, the phantom troop
dropped into formless masses, while the monsters advanced. They came
close to me; and I alone, of all the myriads around, changed not at
their approach. Each laid a talon on my shoulder--each raised a veil
which was one hideous net-work of twining worms. I saw through the
ghastly corruption of their faces the look that told me who they
were--the monstrous iniquities incarnate in monstrous forms; the
fiend-souls made visible in fiend-shapes--Margaret and Mannion!

A moment more! and I was alone with those two. Not a wreck of the
phantom-multitude remained; the towering city, the gleaming corridors,
the fire-bright radiance had vanished. We stood on a wilderness--a
still, black lake of dead waters was before us; a white, faint, misty
light shone on us. Outspread over the noisome ground lay the ruins of a
house, rooted up and overthrown to its foundations. The demon figures,
still watching on either side of me, drew me slowly forward to the
fallen stones, and pointed to two dead bodies lying among them.

My father!--my sister!--both cold and still, and whiter than the white
light that showed them to me. The demons at my side stretched out their
crooked talons, and forbade me to kneel before my father, or to kiss
Clara's wan face, before I went to torment. They struck me motionless
where I stood--and unveiled their hideous faces once more, jeering at me
in triumph. Anon, the lake of black waters heaved up and overflowed,
and noiselessly sucked us away into its central depths--depths that were
endless; depths of rayless darkness, in which we slowly eddied round
and round, deeper and deeper down at every turn. I felt the bodies of
my father and my sister touching me in cold contact: I stretched out my
arms to clasp them and sink with them; and the demon pair glided between
us, and separated me from them. This vain striving to join myself to my
dead kindred when we touched each other in the slow, endless whirlpool,
ever continued and was ever frustrated in the same way. Still we sank
apart, down the black gulphs of the lake; still ther