d, and weariness
and intemperance soon produced their effects. Sending confidential
messengers to attend to my sister's safety, and convey intelligence to my
father, I prepared to await the dawn of morning.

Feverish from anxiety, I felt no inclination to grant my wearied limbs
repose. My brain was racked with the thought of Katherine, and
apprehension for my parents. I had seen enough to convince me that Rainer
had done his worst. What confederate demon had enabled him to escape me?

I paced from post to post, execrating the sluggish march of time. Leaning
over an eminence near the broken bridge, I listened to the turbulent music
of the waters. A subterraneous opening cut in the rocky soil below
communicated with the vaults of the castle. Hearing the echo of a
foot-fall, I bent cautiously over the outlet. A lamp glimmered beneath. A
muffled figure raised it aloft to guide its egress, then extinguished it
hastily. The light fell on the face of the count.

I grasped his cloak as he emerged, but, slipping it from his shoulders, he
retreated toward a shelving wood-walk on the margin of the stream. Had he
gained it, the darkness must have saved him. Both my pistols missed fire.
I outstripped in the race, and bore him back to the very edge of the
ravine. He made a thrust at me with his sword. I neither paused for a
trial of skill, nor attempted to ward off the weapon; the butt-end of a
pistol found its way to his forehead; not a sound passed his lips; down he
went--down--down--passively bounding over the jagged declivity, till a heavy
plash told that he was whirling with the torrent.

Vengeance was satisfied: I recoiled involuntarily from the scene of the
encounter. Suddenly arose an explosion, as if a volcano had torn up the
foundation of the castle: I was felled to the earth ere I could speculate
upon the cause.

VIII.

My campaigns were over. Rainer had laid a train, and fired the powder
magazine of his captured hold. The bravest of my men perished; and I,
crushed beneath a fragment of the toppling towers, lived to curse the art
that returned me mutilated and miserable, to a world in which I was
henceforth to have no portion.

I left the hospital a phantom, and set forth on a pilgrimage, the
performance of which was the only business that remained to me in life.
The tide of battle had ebbed from St. Michael, when I crawled up its
steep--the church and castle were blackened ruins--the habitations of the
vil