have hit it."

"I thought so; and you are his pupil?"

"I am."

"I wish you well through it," said the robber, seriously, and crossing
himself with much devotion; "I am not much better than other people,
but one's soul is one's soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
knocking a man on the head if need be,--but to make a bargain with the
devil!--Ah! take care, young gentleman, take care."

"You need not fear," said Glyndon, smiling; "my preceptor is too wise
and too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble
ruin! A glorious prospect!"

Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below
with the eye of a poet and a painter. Insensibly, while listening to
the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon
a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this
eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built,
there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse
foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged
surface of the abyss; but the profoundness might well be conjectured by
the hoarse, low, monotonous sound of waters unseen that rolled below,
and the subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a
perturbed and rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate
valleys. To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless; the extreme
clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of
a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself
a kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that
day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires,
and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the
sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her
glorious bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect,
might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
the ruined village of the ancient Possidonia. There, in the midst of his
blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while, on
the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance
lent all its magic, glittered many a stream, by which Etruscan and
Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman, had, at intervals of ages,
pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past the stormy and
dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist's mind