, when the pattering of their retiring
feet had died away, was soon accompanied by its fittest companion, total
silence.

The knight felt the departure of these unfortunate creatures a relief.
He could not, from their language, manners, and appearance, doubt that
they belonged to the degraded class of beings whom deformity of person
and weakness of intellect recommended to the painful situation of
appendages to great families, where their personal appearance and
imbecility were food for merriment to the household. Superior in no
respect to the ideas and manners of his time, the Scottish knight might,
at another period, have been much amused by the mummery of these poor
effigies of humanity; but now their appearance, gesticulations, and
language broke the train of deep and solemn feeling with which he was
impressed, and he rejoiced in the disappearance of the unhappy objects.

A few minutes after they had retired, the door at which he had entered
opened slowly, and remaining ajar, discovered a faint light arising from
a lantern placed upon the threshold. Its doubtful and wavering gleam
showed a dark form reclined beside the entrance, but without its
precincts, which, on approaching it more nearly, he recognized to be the
hermit, crouching in the same humble posture in which he had at first
laid himself down, and which, doubtless, he had retained during the
whole time of his guest's continuing in the chapel.

"All is over," said the hermit, as he heard the knight approaching, "and
the most wretched of earthly sinners, with him who should think himself
most honoured and most happy among the race of humanity, must retire
from this place. Take the light, and guide me down the descent, for I
must not uncover my eyes until I am far from this hallowed spot."

The Scottish knight obeyed in silence, for a solemn and yet ecstatic
sense of what he had seen had silenced even the eager workings of
curiosity. He led the way, with considerable accuracy, through the
various secret passages and stairs by which they had ascended, until at
length they found themselves in the outward cell of the hermit's cavern.

"The condemned criminal is restored to his dungeon, reprieved from one
miserable day to another, until his awful Judge shall at length appoint
the well-deserved sentence to be carried into execution."

As the hermit spoke these words, he laid aside the veil with which his
eyes had been bound, and looked at it with a suppressed