yself
beneath our favourite beech, and was soon lulled by the rippling
waters into brief and agitated slumber. My sleep was haunted by a
succession of fearful forms and painful incidents, which at length
assumed a shape distinctly and horribly significant. Methought I lay
upon the summit of a cliff, close to the sloping brink, and gazed into
a gulf too deep and dark for human eye to fathom. Suddenly the immense
void was illumined by sheets of vivid lightning--a monstrous peal of
thunder broke upon my ear--and a colossal form, lengthened and scaly
as a serpent, rose like the demon of the storm, approached the edge of
the precipice, and brought his horrid visage to the level of mine.
Again the lightning flashed, and I distinguished the assassin features
of Barozzo, expanded into horrible and revolting magnitude. Eyes,
lurid and menacing as meteors, glared upon me with a malignant scowl,
and huge lips, parted in a fiendish grin, disclosed an array of fangs,
pointed and glittering as poniards. He extended two gaunt and bony
hands, stained, methought, with my father's blood, and tried to seize
and drag me into the gulf. While writhing to escape the monster's
grasp the thunder again rolled through the abyss; the cliff beneath me
reeled from its foundations, the brink began to crumble, and my
destruction appeared inevitable--when, suddenly, the strains of sweet
and solemn music floated round me--the demon vanished, and I beheld
the pale phantom of my murdered father, extending towards me his
protecting arms. At this moment of intense excitement, the spell which
bound me was dissolved--I awoke, and saw by the brilliant moonlight a
tall figure, enveloped in a mantle, approaching me in stealthy
silence. Gazing more intently, I discovered a dagger in his grasp. In
an instant I was on my feet--the figure rushed forward, but ere he
could reach me, I stood behind the tree, and thus gained time to level
a pistol at his head. Seeing me thus prepared, the villain retreated
hastily, but escaped not the bullet, which my unerring weapon buried
in his back. He reeled and fell; and his life-blood was ebbing fast,
when I stooped to examine his features. Raising the slouched hat which
concealed his face, I immediately recognised a handsome Greek,
attached to the retinue of Barozzo. I had occasionally seen this man
in a tavern at Peschiera. His demeanour was fierce and repulsive, but
my eagerness to learn some particulars of my father's untimely