on his knees, and, clasping his hands
tightly, bent his face over them in the attitude of humiliation and
devotion. I followed his example. After a few minutes he rose: "Once in
every three hours," said he, with a ghastly expression, "for the last
twelve years have I bowed my soul in anguish before God, and risen to
feel that it was in vain: I am cursed without and within!"

"My Father, my Father, is this your faith in the mercies of the Redeemer
who died for man?"

"Talk not to me of faith!" cried the Hermit, wildly. "Ye laymen and
worldlings know nothing of its mysteries and its powers. But begone! the
dread hour is upon me, when my tongue is loosed and my brain darkened,
and I know not my words and shudder at my own thoughts. Begone! no human
being shall witness those moments: they are only for Heaven and my own
soul."

So saying, this unhappy and strange being seized me by the arm and
dragged me towards the passage we had entered. I was in doubt whether
to yield to or contend with him; but there was a glare in his eye and
a flush upon his brow, which, while it betrayed the dreadful disease
of his mind, made me fear that resistance to his wishes might operate
dangerously upon a frame so feeble and reduced. I therefore mechanically
obeyed him. He opened again the entrance to his rugged home, and the
moonlight streamed wanly over his dark robes and spectral figure.

"Go," said he, more mildly than before, "go, and forgive the vehemence
of one whose mind and heart alike are broken within him. Go, but return
to-morrow at sunset. Your air disposes me to trust you."

So saying, he closed the door upon me, and I stood without the cavern
alone.

But did I return home? Did I hasten to press my couch in sleep and sweet
forgetfulness, while he was in that gloomy sepulture of the living, a
prey to anguish, and torn by the fangs of madness and a fierce disease?
No: on the damp grass, beneath the silent skies, I passed a night which
could scarcely have been less wretched than his own. My conjecture was
now and in full confirmed. Heavens! how I loved that man! how, from my
youngest years, had my soul's fondest affections interlaced themselves
with him! with what anguish had I wept his imagined death! and now to
know that he lay within those walls, smitten from brain to heart with so
fearful and mysterious a curse,--to know, too, that he dreaded the sight
of me,--of me who would have laid down my life for his! the grave, which