ceive
conviction.

Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted the wide and dreary
precincts of the catacomb, seeking, as some say, to beguile new victims
into his own misery; but, according to other statements, endeavoring to
prevail on any unwary visitor to take him by the hand, and guide him out
into the daylight. Should his wiles and entreaties take effect, however,
the man-demon would remain only a little while above ground. He would
gratify his fiendish malignity by perpetrating signal mischief on his
benefactor, and perhaps bringing some old pestilence or other forgotten
and long-buried evil on society; or, possibly, teaching the modern
world some decayed and dusty kind of crime, which the antique Romans
knew,--and then would hasten back to the catacomb, which, after so long
haunting it, has grown his most congenial home.

Miriam herself, with her chosen friends, the sculptor and the gentle
Hilda, often laughed at the monstrous fictions that had gone abroad in
reference to her adventure. Her two confidants (for such they were,
on all ordinary subjects) had not failed to ask an explanation of the
mystery, since undeniably a mystery there was, and one sufficiently
perplexing in itself, without any help from the imaginative faculty.
And, sometimes responding to their inquiries with a melancholy sort of
playfulness, Miriam let her fancy run off into wilder fables than any
which German ingenuity or Italian superstition had contrived.

For example, with a strange air of seriousness over all her face, only
belied by a laughing gleam in her dark eyes, she would aver that the
spectre (who had been an artist in his mortal lifetime) had promised
to teach her a long-lost, but invaluable secret of old Roman fresco
painting. The knowledge of this process would place Miriam at the head
of modern art; the sole condition being agreed upon, that she should
return with him into his sightless gloom, after enriching a certain
extent of stuccoed wall with the most brilliant and lovely designs. And
what true votary of art would not purchase unrivalled excellence, even
at so vast a sacrifice!

Or, if her friends still solicited a soberer account, Miriam replied,
that, meeting the old infidel in one of the dismal passages of the
catacomb, she had entered into controversy with him, hoping to achieve
the glory and satisfaction of converting him to the Christian faith. For
the sake of so excellent a result; she had even staked her own