—“Yes, yes!” said he, “this is it! Found in good time!—Helen, return! or canst thou find the way through these vaults without assistance?”— She dragged her feeble steps towards him: he grasped her arm, and dashed her with violence down a few steps terminating in a small cave. She sank on the ground with a shriek of pain, which her tyrant answered by a burst of diabolical laughter. —“Here, traitress!” he exclaimed; “here is the place of your punishment and your perdition; and here is the last nourishment, which you shall ever receive on this side the grave. I give it not out of compassion, but that you may not perish in your present state of stupor, and thus escape the sense of what I have doomed you to suffer.—Eat! revive to the full consciousness of your misery; then die in agony, as others have died here before you!”— Thus saying, he placed by her side a loaf of bread and a small flask of water, which he had brought with him in his pilgrim’s scrip. She was not in a condition to make him any answer, and listened in morbid silence, while he quitted the cave, flinging the door after him with violence, and carefully barricading it on the outside to prevent her escape. Nothing now animated the frame of Helen but mere animal life; and even that was half extinguished by the shock which she had sustained the day before and by long abstinence from all nourishment. She was scarcely conscious of what had past, and it afterwards cost her no little difficulty to recall the recollection of it. Instinct made her seize eagerly the food, of which she had so long been deprived; and the relief, which this afforded her, was the first thing, which brought her to herself, and gave her spirits to ask the question—“What has happened to me? Whither have I been conveyed?”—She thought, that she must be the sport of some fantastic vision, and with the sensation of being totally exhausted she closed her eyes, and endeavoured to end her dream.