t to yield. He gazed wistfully at the ring, which Rita still held up
to his view; his eyes twinkled with covetousness, and he half extended
his hand. Rita slipped the ring into the fold of the letter, and threw
both down to him. Dexterously catching, and thrusting them into his
breast, he glanced furtively around, to see that he was unobserved. He
stood near the wall, just under the window, and the iron bars preventing
Rita from putting out her head, only the upper half of his figure was
visible to her. At that moment, to her infinite surprise and alarm, she
saw an extraordinary change come over his features. Their expression of
greedy cunning was replaced, with a suddenness that appeared almost
magical, by one of pain and terror; and scarcely had Rita had time to
observe the transformation, when he lay upon the ground, struggling
violently, but in vain, against some unseen power, that drew him
towards the wall. He caught at the grass and weeds, which grew in
profusion on the rarely-trodden path; he writhed, and endeavoured to
turn himself upon his face, but without success. With pale and terrified
visage, but in dogged silence, he strove against an agency invisible to
Rita, and which he was totally unable to resist. His body speedily
vanished from her sight, then his head, and finally his outstretched
arms; the rustling noise, occasioned by his passage through the herbage,
ceased; and Rita, aghast at this extraordinary and mysterious
occurrence, again found herself alone. We will leave her to her
astonishment and conjecture, whilst we follow the gipsy to the place
whither he had been so involuntarily and unceremoniously conveyed, a
description of which will furnish a key to his seemingly unaccountable
disappearance.

It was a vault of considerable extent, surrounded by casks of various
sizes, most of which would, on being touched, have given, by their
ringing sound, assurance of their emptiness. In bins, at one extremity
of the cellar, were a number of bottles, whose thick mantle of dust and
cobwebs spoke volumes for the ripe and racy nature of their contents. A
large chest of cedar-wood stood in the innermost nook of the cellar,
with raised lid, disclosing a quantity of cigars, worm-eaten and musty
from extreme age. In the massive wall, forming one end of the vault, and
which was in fact the foundation of the outer wall of the convent, was a
large doorway; but the door had been removed, and the aperture filled
with st