stones, and examine more closely the irregularity he had just
discovered in the wall, when a vivid flash of lightning, unusually
prolonged, showed him, obstructing at scarcely a yard's distance his
onward path, the figure he had already distantly beheld from the plain
behind.

There was something inexpressibly fearful in his viewless vicinity,
during the next moment of darkness, to this silent, mysterious form, so
imperfectly shown by the lightning that quivered over its half-revealed
proportions. Every pulse in the body of the Goth seemed to pause as he
stood, with ready weapon, looking into the gloomy darkness, and wafting
for the next flash. It came, and displayed to him the man's fierce
eyes glaring steadily down upon his face; another gleam, and he beheld
his haggard finger placed upon his lip in token of silence; a third,
and he saw the arm of the figure pointing towards the plain behind him;
and then in the darkness that followed, a hot breath played upon his
ear, and a voice whispered to him, through a pause in the rolling of
the thunder--'Follow me.'

The next instant Hermanric felt the momentary contact of the man's
body, as with noiseless steps he passed him on the stones. It was no
time to deliberate or to doubt. He followed close upon the stranger's
footsteps, gaining glimpses of his dark form moving onward before,
whenever the lightning briefly illuminated the scene, until they
arrived at a clump of trees, not far distant from the houses in the
suburbs that were occupied by the Goths under his own command.

Here the stranger paused before the trunk of a tree which stood between
the city wall and himself, and drew from beneath his ragged cloak a
small lantern, carefully covered with a piece of cloth, which he now
removed, and holding the light high above his head, regarded the Goth
with a steady and anxious scrutiny.

Hermanric attempted to address him first, but the appearance of the
man, barely visible though it was by the feeble light of his lantern,
was so startling and repulsive, that the half-formed words died away on
his lips. The face of the stranger was of a ghastly paleness; his
hollow cheeks were seamed with deep wrinkles; and his eyes glared with
an expression of ferocious suspicion. One of his arms was covered with
old bandages, stiff with coagulated blood, and hung paralysed at his
side. The hand that held the light trembled, so that the lantern
containing it vibrated continuously in