rregular marshes. In other
places they were less palpable. Here, the temporary path was entirely
hidden by the incursions of a swollen torrent; there, it was faintly
perceptible in occasional patches of soft ground, or partly traceable
by fragments of abandoned armour, skeletons of horses and men, and
remnants of the rude bridges which had once served for passage across a
river or transit over a precipice.

Among the rocks of the topmost of the range of mountains immediately
overhanging the plains of Italy, and presenting the last barrier to the
exertions of a traveller or the march of an invader, there lay, at the
beginning of the fifth century, a little lake. Bounded on three sides
by precipices, its narrow banks barren of verdure or habitations, and
its dark and stagnant waters brightened but rarely by the presence of
the lively sunlight, this solitary spot--at all times
mournful--presented, on the autumn of the day when our story commences,
an aspect of desolation at once dismal to the eye and oppressive to the
heart.

It was near noon; but no sun appeared in the heaven. The dull clouds,
monotonous in colour and form, hid all beauty in the firmament, and
shed heavy darkness on the earth. Dense, stagnant vapours clung to the
mountain summits; from the drooping trees dead leaves and rotten
branches sunk, at intervals, on the oozy soil, or whirled over the
gloomy precipice; and a small steady rain fell, slow and
unintermitting, upon the deserts around. Standing upon the path which
armies had once trodden, and which armies were still destined to tread,
and looking towards the solitary lake, you heard, at first, no sound
but the regular dripping of the rain-drops from rock to rock; you saw
no prospect but the motionless waters at your feet, and the dusky crags
which shadowed them from above. When, however, impressed by the
mysterious loneliness of the place, the eye grew more penetrating and
the ear more attentive, a cavern became apparent in the precipices
round the lake; and, in the intervals of the heavy rain-drops, were
faintly perceptible the sounds of a human voice.

The mouth of the cavern was partly concealed by a large stone, on which
were piled some masses of rotten brushwood, as if for the purpose of
protecting any inhabitant it might contain from the coldness of the
atmosphere without. Placed at the eastward boundary of the lake, this
strange place of refuge commanded a view not only of the rugged