eyes and ears.

I peered anxiously around me in every direction, but I could see no sign
of her whom I had come to meet.

Incidentally, however, I noticed that in the lighting, such as it was,
there was no flame, no "living" light. Whatever light there was came
muffled, as though through some green translucent stone. The whole
effect was terribly weird and disconcerting.

Presently I started, as, seemingly out of the darkness beside me, a man's
hand stretched out and took mine. Turning, I found close to me a tall
man with shining black eyes and long black hair and beard. He was clad
in some kind of gorgeous robe of cloth of gold, rich with variety of
adornment. His head was covered with a high, over-hanging hat draped
closely with a black scarf, the ends of which formed a long, hanging veil
on either side. These veils, falling over the magnificent robes of cloth
of gold, had an extraordinarily solemn effect.

I yielded myself to the guiding hand, and shortly found myself, so far as
I could see, at one side of the sanctuary.

In the floor close to my feet was a yawning chasm, into which, from so
high over my head that in the uncertain light I could not distinguish its
origin, hung a chain. At the sight a strange wave of memory swept over
me. I could not but remember the chain which hung over the glass-covered
tomb in the Crypt, and I had an instinctive feeling that the grim chasm
in the floor of the sanctuary was but the other side of the opening in
the roof of the crypt from which the chain over the sarcophagus depended.

There was a creaking sound--the groaning of a windlass and the clanking
of a chain. There was heavy breathing close to me somewhere. I was so
intent on what was going on that I did not see that one by one, seeming
to grow out of the surrounding darkness, several black figures in monkish
garb appeared with the silence of ghosts. Their faces were shrouded in
black cowls, wherein were holes through which I could see dark gleaming
eyes. My guide held me tightly by the hand. This gave me a feeling of
security in the touch which helped to retain within my breast some
semblance of calm.

The strain of the creaking windlass and the clanking chain continued for
so long that the suspense became almost unendurable. At last there came
into sight an iron ring, from which as a centre depended four lesser
chains spreading wide. In a few seconds more I could see that these were
fixed to the corne