The cloud in the meantime sailed on--it approached--the moon was dimmed, darkened, and finally buried in its gloom. The maniac marked the hour, and rushed with a fearful cry towards his victim. With murderous resolution he grasped her throat, while the helpless hand and half-strangled articulation implored his compassion. After one final struggle the hollow death-rattle announced that life was extinct, and that the murderer held a corpse in his arms. An interval of reason now occurred, and on the partial restoration of his mind Reginald discovered himself the unconscious murderer of Marcelia. Madness--deepest madness again took possession of his faculties. He laughed--he shouted aloud with the unearthly yellings of a fiend, and in the raging violence of his delirium he rushed out, climbed to the summit of the tower, and hurled himself headlong from it. In the morning the bodies of the young couple were discovered, and buried in the same tomb. The fatal ruin of Rudstein still exists, but is now commonly avoided as the residence of the spirits of the departed. Day by day it slowly crumbles to earth, and affords a shelter for the night raven or the wild things of the forests. Superstition has consecrated it to herself, and the tradition of the country has invested it with all the awful appendages of a charnel house. The wanderer who passes at nightfall shudders while he surveys its utter desolation, and exclaims as he travels on: ‘Surely this is a spot where guilt may thrive in safety, or bigotry weave a spell to enthral her misguided votaries.’ XIII THE DANCE OF THE DEAD FOUNDED ON A WELL-KNOWN GERMAN LEGEND Neisse is a small town in Silesia. At the period of this story it lay somewhat out of the beaten track, and its inhabitants led a simple, primitive sort of life, although bickerings and wranglings, cheating and knavery were not altogether unknown among them. On the whole, however, they were a fairly virtuous people, and the town earned an enviable reputation for hospitality, in spite of the fact that the mayor was far from being hospitable himself, but he did not hesitate to dispense hospitality with a lavish hand when he could do so out of the town funds. This mayor, whose name was Hertzstein, was an exceedingly proud and ambitious man. He had been born in very humble circumstances indeed, his father having been a charcoal burner; but Rupert Hertzstein was endowed with more than average intelligence, though even as a lad he displayed a grasping, covetous disposition that made him many youthful enemies. As he grew in years he by no means changed, but he managed to make his way. Before he was fifteen he went to Saxony and apprenticed himself to a worker in precious metals, and showed so much intelligence that before he had completed the term of his apprenticeship he was master of his trade.