e the use of light, while at the same
time he held the lamp to the Scot, who followed him for many steps up
the narrow ascent. At length they rested in a small vault of irregular
form, in one nook of which the staircase terminated, while in another
corner a corresponding stair was seen to continue the ascent. In a
third angle was a Gothic door, very rudely ornamented with the usual
attributes of clustered columns and carving, and defended by a wicket,
strongly guarded with iron, and studded with large nails. To this
last point the hermit directed his steps, which seemed to falter as he
approached it.

"Put off thy shoes," he said to his attendant; "the ground on which
thou standest is holy. Banish from thy innermost heart each profane and
carnal thought, for to harbour such while in this place were a deadly
impiety."

The knight laid aside his shoes as he was commanded, and the hermit
stood in the meanwhile as if communing with his soul in secret prayer,
and when he again moved, commanded the knight to knock at the wicket
three times. He did so. The door opened spontaneously--at least Sir
Kenneth beheld no one--and his senses were at once assailed by a stream
of the purest light, and by a strong and almost oppressive sense of the
richest perfumes. He stepped two or three paces back, and it was the
space of a minute ere he recovered the dazzling and overpowering effects
of the sudden change from darkness to light.

When he entered the apartment in which this brilliant lustre was
displayed, he perceived that the light proceeded from a combination of
silver lamps, fed with purest oil, and sending forth the richest odours,
hanging by silver chains from the roof of a small Gothic chapel, hewn,
like most part of the hermit's singular mansion, out of the sound and
solid rock. But whereas, in every other place which Sir Kenneth had
seen, the labour employed upon the rock had been of the simplest and
coarsest description, it had in this chapel employed the invention and
the chisels of the most able architects. The groined roofs rose from six
columns on each side, carved with the rarest skill; and the manner in
which the crossings of the concave arches were bound together, as it
were, with appropriate ornaments, were all in the finest tone of the
architecture of the age. Corresponding to the line of pillars, there
were on each side six richly-wrought niches, each of which contained the
image of one of the twelve apostles.

A