trange group were assembled within the
cathedral vaults, at the very hour that mass for the departed was
being chanted in the church above their heads; it consisted of monks
and travelling friars, accompanied by five or six of the highest
nobility; their persons concealed in coarse mantles and shrouding
hoods; they had borne with them, through the subterranean passages
of the crypt, leading to the vaults, a coffin so exactly similar in
workmanship and inscription to that which contained the remains of
their late companion, that to distinguish the one from the other was
impossible. The real one, moved with awe and solemnity, was conveyed
to a secret recess close to the entrance of the crypt, and replaced
in the vault by the one they had brought with them. As silently, as
voicelessly as they had entered and done their work, so they departed.
The following night, at the same hour, the coffin of Morales, over
which had been nailed a thick black pall, so that neither name,
inscription, nor ornament could be perceived, was conveyed from
Segovia in a covered cart, belonging, it appeared, to the monastery of
St. Francis, situated some leagues southward, and attended by one or
two monks and friars of the same order. The party proceeded leisurely,
travelling more by night than by day, diminishing gradually in number
till, at the entrance of a broad and desolate plain, only four
remained with the cart. Over this plain they hastened, then wound
through a circuitous path concealed in prickly brushwood, and paused
before a huge, misshapen crag, seemingly half buried in the earth: in
this a door, formed of one solid stone, flew back at their touch;
the coffin, taken with reverence from the cart, was borne on their
shoulders through the dark and narrow passage, and down the winding
stair, till they stood in safety in the vale; in the secret entrance
by which they entered, the lock closed as they passed, and was
apparently lost in the solid wall. Three or four awaited them--nobles,
who had craved leave of absence for a brief interval from the court,
and who had come by different paths to the secret retreat (no doubt
already recognized by our readers as the Vale of Cedars), to lay
Morales with his fathers, with the simple form, yet solemn service
peculiar to the burials of their darkly hidden race. The grave was
already dug beside that of Manuel Henriquez; the coffin, resting
during the continuance of a brief prayer and psalm in the littl