A monk, who had been sent for from the monastery, was engaged in administering to him the last sacrament. On a table lay a paper, on which the pious Franciscan had just written the last testament of the dying man. An oil lamp hung upon the dirty wall, and lit up the stone vault and the solemn scene of death. With a sympathizing look at the dying man-at-arms Aagé quitted the guard-room, almost unnoticed, and opened the door to what was called "the corpse chamber," from which, according to tradition, there had been, in Esbern Snare's time, a descent to a subterranean passage, and where Aagé conjectured he should discover the supposed secret entrance to the castle. Into this murky chamber, which had the reputation of being haunted, the captive murderer had been brought. Through the aid of the surgeon he had been restored to consciousness, and had his wound dressed; but he talked and raved wildly. He had been bound to the bench appropriated to the bodies of the drowned, which served him as a couch, and all had deserted him with horror and aversion. When Drost Aagé entered this chamber, the light of a yellow horn lantern, which hung from the roof, fell on the murderer's swollen blue visage with the hare-lip scar and ugly projecting teeth: he laughed horribly, and ground his teeth like a chained wild beast. "Comest thou hither, thou excommunicated hound!" he muttered, thrusting forth his tongue from his foaming jaws; "then thou art also dead and damned--that's some small comfort, though among devils--Now are the fishes gnawing at my fist, at the bottom of the sea, while I lie a corpse here in hell's antechamber--that was thy doing, thou pale ghost, with St. George's sword! I feared thou hadst come off free, for thy stupid piety's sake, and thy hound-like faithfulness." "Why so?" asked Aagé, strangely affected by having half entered into the dark imaginings of the madman--"How couldst thou think an excommunicated man could 'scape damnation?" "Seest thou, comrade?" whispered the bound robber, gazing wildly around him, "the same holy man who gave thee over to the Evil One, gave me a passport to heaven's kingdom. It lies there in my jerkin; Satan's barber cut it off from me just now; and the letter was a lie,--like all virtue and piety in the world. If that holy man could give me a false warrant for salvation, he might also have made a false reckoning with thy soul. It pleaseth me, however, to see he is apt in some things," he continued, with a horrible laugh. "I ever thought so: those black fellows can curse far better than they can bless. But who did thy business for thee? The hand that should have done it is gone to the Devil--Ha! there bites a hungry fish at my fingers' ends." "From whom was the private letter? and to whom shouldst thou have brought it?" asked Aagé, suddenly in a stern voice, and in a tone of overawing authority: "confess the truth, and it shall fare better with thee, wretch, than thou hast deserved!"