fficult, nor did he care for any thing that was
going forward. His mind was occupied with the dead Clorinda. He had now
work that aroused him; and he set out in good earnest for the forest, not
unmoved in his imagination, but resolved to defy all appearances.

Arrived at the wall of fire, Tancred halted a moment, and looked up at
the visages on its battlements, not without alarm. Many reflections
passed swiftly through his mind, some urging him forward, others
withholding; but he concluded with stepping right through the fire. It
did not resist him: he did not feel it.

The fire vanished; and, in its stead, there poured down a storm of hail
and rain, black as midnight. This vanished also.

Tancred stood amazed for an instant, and then passed on. He was soon in
the thick of the wood, and for some time made his way with difficulty. On
a sudden, he issued forth into a large open glade, like an amphitheatre,
in which there was nothing but a cypress-tree that stood in the middle.
The cypress was marked with hieroglyphical characters, mixed with some
words in the Syrian tongue which he could read; and these words requested
the stranger to spare the fated place, nor trouble the departed souls who
were there shut up in the trees. Meantime the wind was constantly moaning
around it; and in the moaning was a sound of human sighs and tears.

Tancred's heart, for a moment, was overcome with awe and pity; but
recollecting himself, and resolving to make amends for his credulity,
he smote with all his might at the cypress. The blow, wonderful to see,
produced an effusion of blood, which dyed the grass about the root.
Tancred's hair stood on end. He smote, however, again, with double
violence, resolving to see the end of the marvel; and then he heard a
woful voice issuing as from a tomb.

"Hast thou not hurt me," it said, "Tancred, enough already? Hast thou
slain the human body which I once joyfully inhabited; and now must thou
cut and rend me, even in this wretched enclosure? My name was Clorinda.
Every tree which thou beholdest is the habitation of some Christian or
Pagan soul; for all come hither that are slain beneath the walls of the
city, compelled by I know not what power, or for what reason. Every bough
in the forest is alive; and when thou cuttest down a tree, thou slayest a
soul."

As a sick man in a dream thinks, and yet thinks not, that he sees some
dreadful monster, and, notwithstanding his doubt, wishes to fly from th