ouw respected very much, forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic,
though one perhaps more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a
Christian--of pure morality, subtle brain, and frozen heart. He entered
the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined and
immediately on his arrival, she requested him to pray for her, as for
one who lay in the hands of Satan, and who could hope for deliverance
only from heaven.

That you may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event
which I am going to describe, it is necessary to state the relative
position of the parties who were engaged in it. The old clergyman and
Schalken were in the anteroom of which I have already spoken; Rose lay
in the inner chamber, the door of which was open; and by the side of the
bed, at her urgent desire, stood her guardian; a candle burned in the
bedchamber, and three were lighted in the outer apartment. The old man
now cleared his voice as if about to commence, but before he had time to
begin, a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to
illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay, and she, with hurried
alarm, exclaimed:----

"Godfrey, bring in another candle; the darkness is unsafe."

Gerard Douw forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions, in the
immediate impulse, stepped from the bedchamber into the other, in order
to supply what she desired.

"Oh God! do not go, dear uncle," shrieked the unhappy girl--and at the
same time she sprung from the bed, and darted after him, in order, by
her grasp, to detain him. But the warning came too late, for scarcely
had he passed the threshold, and hardly had his niece had time to utter
the startling exclamation, when the door which divided the two rooms
closed violently after him, as if swung by a strong blast of wind.
Schalken and he both rushed to the door, but their united and desperate
efforts could not avail so much as to shake it. Shriek after shriek
burst from the inner chamber, with all the piercing loudness of
despairing terror. Schalken and Douw applied every nerve to force open
the door; but all in vain. There was no sound of struggling from within,
but the screams seemed to increase in loudness, and at the same time
they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn, and the window
itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open. One _last_ shriek, so
long and piercing and agonized as to be scarcely human, swelled from the
room, and suddenly there fo