eliverance. His
fate was sealed. Death awaited him. He must anticipate his slow but
inevitable stroke, enduring all the grinding horrors of starvation. The
contemplation of such an end was madness, but he was forced to
contemplate it now; and so appalling did it appear to his imagination,
that he half resolved to dash out his brains against the walls of the
sepulchre, and put an end at once to his tortures; and nothing, except a
doubt whether he might not, by imperfectly accomplishing his purpose,
increase his own suffering, prevented him from putting this dreadful
idea into execution. His dagger was gone, and he had no other weapon.
Terrors of a new kind now assailed him. The dead, he fancied, were
bursting from their coffins, and he peopled the darkness with grisly
phantoms. They were around about him on each side, whirling and
rustling, gibbering, groaning, shrieking, laughing, and lamenting. He
was stunned, stifled. The air seemed to grow suffocating, pestilential;
the wild laughter was redoubled; the horrible troop assailed him; they
dragged him along the tomb, and amid their howls he fell, and became
insensible.

When he returned to himself, it was some time before he could collect
his scattered faculties; and when the agonizing consciousness of his
terrible situation forced itself upon his mind, he had nigh relapsed
into oblivion. He arose. He rushed towards the door; he knocked against
it with his knuckles till the blood streamed from them; he scratched
against it with his nails till they were torn off by the roots. With
insane fury he hurled himself against the iron frame; it was in vain.
Again he had recourse to the trap-door. He searched for it; he found it.
He laid himself upon the ground. There was no interval of space in which
he could insert a finger's point. He beat it with his clenched hand; he
tore it with his teeth; he jumped upon it; he smote it with his heel.
The iron returned a sullen sound.

He again essayed the lid of the sarcophagus. Despair nerved his
strength. He raised the slab a few inches. He shouted, screamed, but no
answer was returned; and again the lid fell.

"She is dead!" cried Alan. "Why have I not shared her fate? But mine is
to come. And such a death!--oh, oh!" And, frenzied at the thought, he
again hurried to the door, and renewed his fruitless attempts to
escape, till nature gave way, and he sank upon the floor, groaning and
exhausted.

Physical suffering now began to take t