is dark canopy, and of the tempestuous agitation with which
the midnight storm swept to and fro beneath it.

At length I arrived at a long slated house, situated in a solitary part
of the neighborhood; a little below it ran a small stream, which was
now swollen above its banks, and rushing with mimic roar over the flat
meadows beside it. The appearance of the bare slated building in such
a night was particularly sombre, and to those, like me, who knew the
purpose to which it was usually devoted, it was or ought to have been
peculiarly so. There it stood, silent and gloomy, without any appearance
of human life or enjoyment about or within it. As I approached, the moon
once more had broken out of the clouds, and shone dimly upon the wet,
glittering slates and windows, with a death-like lustre, that gradually
faded away as I left the point of observation, and entered the
folding-door. It was the parish chapel.

The scene which presented itself here was in keeping not only with the
external appearance of the house, but with the darkness, the storm, and
the hour, which was now a little after midnight. About forty persons
were sitting in dead silence upon the circular steps of the altar. They
did not seem to move; and as I entered and advanced, the echo of my
footsteps rang through the building with a lonely distinctness, which
added to the solemnity and mystery of the circumstances about me. The
windows were secured with shutters on the inside, and on the altar a
candle was lighted, which burned dimly amid the surrounding darkness,
and lengthened the shadow of the altar itself, and those of six or
seven persons who stood on its upper steps, until they mingled in the
obscurity which shrouded the lower end of the chapel. The faces of the
men who sat on the altar steps were not distinctly visible, yet their
prominent and more characteristic features were in sufficient relief,
and I observed, that some of the most malignant and reckless spirits in
the parish were assembled. In the eyes of those who stood at the altar,
and those whom I knew to be invested with authority over the others, I
could perceive gleams of some latent and ferocious purpose, kindled,
as I soon observed, into a fiercer expression of vengeance, by the
additional excitement of ardent spirits, with which they had stimulated
themselves to a point of determination that mocked at the apprehension
of all future responsibility, either in this world or the next.

T