ert dead, he designs me to supply thy place; to carry on the
dark mystery of iniquity, a glimpse of which hath already been
revealed."

"Would that I had been left to perish--that my doom were ended.
Avarice--ambition--how enslaved are your victims! How have I longed
for my miserable cottage, my poverty, my obscurity--cold and pinching
want, but a quiet conscience to season my scanty meal! I bartered all
for gold, for fame and--misery! A cruel bondage! compared to which I
could envy the meanest thing that crawls on this abject earth. In my
trance I dreamed of green fields and babbling streams; of my brethren,
my playmates, my days of innocence and sport, when all was freshness
and anticipation--life one bright vista beyond, opening to sunny
regions of rapture and delight. And now, what am I?--a wretch,
degraded, undone--a spectacle of misery beyond what human thought can
conceive. Doomed to years, ages it may be, of woe--to scenes of horror
such as tongue ne'er told, and even imagination might scarce endure,
and my miseries but a foretaste of that hereafter!"

Here the guilty victim writhed in a paroxysm of agony; his veins
swollen almost to bursting. Whether real or imaginary, whether a
victim to insanity or of some supernatural agent, its influence was
not the less terrible in its effects. Starting suddenly from his
grovelling posture, he cried, fixing his eyes on De Vessey with a
searching glance--

"What brings thee hither?"

"Leonora is in jeopardy by your spells. I seek her deliverance."

"She is beyond rescue. Leonora da Rimini is THE SKELETON'S BRIDE."

Here the painter threw such a repulsive glance towards the cabinet
that the cavalier shrank back as though expecting some grisly spectre
from its portals; yet, himself the subject of an extraordinary
fascination, he could not withdraw his gaze.

"Fly, fly, or thou art lost! My tormentor will be here anon--I would
have saved her, and he fixed his burning gripe here, I feel it still;
not a night passes that he comes not hither. Away! shouldest thou meet
him thy doom is fixed, and for ever. I would not that another fell
into his toils. Couldest thou know, ay, but as a whisper, the secrets
of this prison-house, thy spirit would melt, thy flesh would shrink as
though the hot wind of the desert had passed over it. What I have
endured, and what I must endure, are alike unutterable."

"Thy keeper comes not to-night. He hath sent me to this chamber of
death inst