was done speaking he smiled again.

'Then I spoke out very loud and bold, and I said, "In the name of God,
let me out of this bad place." And there was a great man that I did not
see before, sitting at the end of the table that I was near; and he was
taller than twelve men, and his face was very proud and terrible to look
at. And he stood up and stretched out his hand before him; and when he
stood up, all that was there, great and small, bowed down with a sighing
sound, and a dread came on my heart, and he looked at me, and I could
not speak. I felt I was his own, to do what he liked with, for I knew at
once who he was; and he said, "If you promise to return, you may depart
for a season;" and the voice he spoke with was terrible and mournful,
and the echoes of it went rolling and swelling down the endless cave,
and mixing with the trembling of the fire overhead; so that when he
sat down there was a sound after him, all through the place, like
the roaring of a furnace, and I said, with all the strength I had, "I
promise to come back--in God's name let me go!"

'And with that I lost the sight and the hearing of all that was there,
and when my senses came to me again, I was sitting in the bed with the
blood all over me, and you and the rest praying around the room.'

Here he paused and wiped away the chill drops of horror which hung upon
his forehead.

I remained silent for some moments. The vision which he had just
described struck my imagination not a little, for this was long
before Vathek and the 'Hall of Eblis' had delighted the world; and the
description which he gave had, as I received it, all the attractions of
novelty beside the impressiveness which always belongs to the narration
of an EYE-WITNESS, whether in the body or in the spirit, of the scenes
which he describes. There was something, too, in the stern horror
with which the man related these things, and in the incongruity of his
description, with the vulgarly received notions of the great place of
punishment, and of its presiding spirit, which struck my mind with awe,
almost with fear. At length he said, with an expression of horrible,
imploring earnestness, which I shall never forget--'Well, sir, is
there any hope; is there any chance at all? or, is my soul pledged and
promised away for ever? is it gone out of my power? must I go back to
the place?'

In answering him, I had no easy task to perform; for however clear
might be my internal conviction of