(fancy “nerves” in a ballad!)— “Sir knight, Sir knight, a beauty bright In durance waits for you.” The ballad, written by M.G. Lewis, now describes in a painfully commonplace manner the knight’s further adventures. He and his guide wandered round and round and high and low in the maze of chambers within the castle, until at last a door of brass, whose bolt was a venomous snake, gave them entrance to a gloomy hall, draped in black, which the “hundred lights” failed to brighten. In the hall a hundred knights of “marble white” lay sleeping by their steeds of “marble black as the raven’s back.” At the end of the hall, guarded by two huge skeleton forms, the imprisoned lady was seen in tears within a crystal tomb. One skeleton held in his bony fingers a horn, the other a “falchion bright,” and the knight was told to choose between them, and the fate of himself and the lady would depend upon his choice. Sir Guy, after long hesitation, blew a shrill blast upon the horn; at the sound the hundred steeds stamped their hoofs, the hundred knights sprang up, and the unlucky knight fell down senseless, with his ghastly guide’s words ringing in his ears— “Shame on the coward who sounded a horn When he might have unsheathed a sword!” In the morning, the unfortunate Sir Guy awoke to find himself lying amongst the ruins, and forthwith began his ceaseless and unavailing search for the lady he had failed to rescue.