dragged downwards, and, from the motion,
steps were the medium of descent. A door or two had been raised or
opened, a narrow passage previously traversed, and a short time only
elapsed from the cool freshness of the evening air to the damp and
stifling atmosphere that he now breathed. What could be the cause of
his seizure he was quite incompetent to guess. He could not recollect
that he had either pique or grudge on his hands; and what should be
the result he only bewildered and wearied himself by striving to
anticipate.

It was surely a dream. He heard a voice of ravishing sweetness; such
pure and silvery tones, that aught earthly could have produced it was
out of the question; it was like the swell of some AEolian lyre--words,
too, modifying and enhancing that liquid harmony. It was a hymn, but
in a foreign tongue. He soon recognised the evening hymn to the
Virgin--

"Mater amata, intemerata,
Ora, ora, pro nobis."

So sweetly did the music melt into his soul, that he quite forgot his
thrall, and every sense was attuned to the melody. When the sound
ceased he made an effort to get free. He loosened his hands, and
immediately tore off the bandage from his eyes. A few seconds elapsed,
when he saw a light streaming through a crevice. Looking through, he
saw a taper burning before a little shrine, where two females in white
raiment, closely veiled, were kneeling.

The celebration of such rites, at that time strictly prohibited,
sufficiently accounted for their concealment, and plainly intimated
that the parties were not of the Reformed faith.

By the light which penetrated his cell from this source he saw it was
furnished with a stone bench, and a narrow flight of steps in one
corner communicated with a trap-door above.

The old mansion at Belfield, contiguous to these ruins, once belonging
to the Knights of St John, had been for some years untenanted, and, as
often happens to the lot of deserted houses, strange noises, sights,
and other manifestations of ghostly occupants were heard and seen by
passers-by, rendering it a neighbourhood not overliked by those who
had business that way after nightfall.

Gervase Buckley was pretty well assured that he had been conveyed into
some concealed subterranean chamber, but for what purpose he could not
comprehend. He was not easily intimidated; and though in a somewhat
sorry plight, he now felt little apprehension on the score of
supernatural visitations: but h