the whole expanse; no house was near, but just where
they had beheld the light, they thought they saw in the recess of the
cavern the outline of a human form. The darkness once more returned;
the light, no longer paled beneath the fires of heaven, burned forth
again: they resolved to ascend towards it; they had to wind their way
among vast fragments of stone, here and there overhung with wild bushes;
but they gained nearer and nearer to the light, and at length they stood
opposite the mouth of a kind of cavern, apparently formed by huge
splinters of rock that had fallen transversely athwart each other: and,
looking into the gloom, each drew back involuntarily with a
superstitious fear and chill.

A fire burned in the far recess of the cave; and over it was a small
cauldron; on a tall and thin column of iron stood a rude lamp; over that
part of the wall, at the base of which burned the fire, hung in many
rows, as if to dry, a profusion of herbs and weeds. A fox, couched
before the fire, gazed upon the strangers with its bright and red
eye--its hair bristling--and a low growl stealing from between its
teeth; in the centre of the cave was an earthen statue, which had three
heads of a singular and fantastic cast: they were formed by the real
skulls of a dog, a horse, and a boar; a low tripod stood before this
wild representation of the popular Hecate.

But it was not these appendages and appliances of the cave that thrilled
the blood of those who gazed fearfully therein--it was the face of its
inmate. Before the fire, with the light shining full upon her features,
sat a woman of considerable age. Perhaps in no country are there seen
so many hags as in Italy--in no country does beauty so awfully change,
in age, to hideousness the most appalling and revolting. But the old
woman now before them was not one of these specimens of the extreme of
human ugliness; on the contrary, her countenance betrayed the remains of
a regular but high and aquiline order of feature: with stony eyes turned
upon them--with a look that met and fascinated theirs--they beheld in
that fearful countenance the very image of a corpse!--the same, the
glazed and lustreless regard, the blue and shrunken lips, the drawn and
hollow jaw--the dead, lank hair, of a pale grey--the livid, green,
ghastly skin, which seemed all surely tinged and tainted by the grave!

'It is a dead thing,' said Glaucus.

'Nay--it stirs--it is a ghost or larva,' faltered Ione,