“Aye,” cried he, “I knew that I could not escape you; you have come at last. Spirit, leave me to die! Or if,” said he, half rising and looking in my face with a steady yet dim glare, “you can tell the secrets of the grave, tell me what is my fate. I adjure you, fearful being, by the God of Israel; by the gods of the pagan, or if you acknowledge any god beyond the dreams of miserable man, tell me what I am to be?” I continued silent, struck with the agony of his features. Jubal entered, and the looks of the dying man were turned on him. “More of them!” he exclaimed, “more tormentors! more terrible witnesses of the tortures of a wretch whom earth casts out! What I demand of you is the fate of those who live as I have lived—the betrayer, the plunderer, the man of blood? But you will give me no answer. The time of your power is not come.” He lay for a short period in mental sufferings; then, starting upon his feet by an extraordinary effort of nature, and with furious execrations at the tardiness of death, he tore off the bandage which covered a wound on his forehead. The blood streamed down and made him a ghastly spectacle. [Sidenote: Conscience-Stricken] “Aye,” cried he, as he looked upon his stained hands, “this is the true color; the traitor’s blood should cover the traitor’s hands. Years of crime, this is your reward. The betrayal of my noble master to death, the ruin of his house, the destruction of his name; these were the right beginnings to the life of the robber.” A peal of thunder rolled over our heads and the gush of the rising waves roared through the cavern. “Aye, there is your army,” he cried, “coming in the storm. I have seen your angry visages at night in the burning village; I have seen you in the shipwreck; I have seen you in the howling wilderness; but now I see you in shapes more terrible than all.” The wind bursting through the long vaults forced open the door. “Welcome, welcome to your prey!” he yelled, and drawing a knife from his sash, darted it into his bosom. The act was so instantaneous that to arrest the blow was impossible. He fell and died with a brief, fierce struggle. “Horrible end,” murmured Jubal, gazing on the silent form; “happier for that wretch to have perished in the hottest strife of man or nature, trampled in the charge or plunged into the billows! Save me from the misery of lonely death!” “Yet,” said I, “it was our presence that made him feel. He was guilty of some crime, perhaps of many, that the sight of us awoke to torment his dying hour. I saw that he gazed upon me with evident alarm, and not improbably my withered face, and those rags of my dungeon, startled him into recollections too strong for his decaying reason.” “Have you ever seen him before?” “Never.” I gave a reluctant look at the hideous distortion of a countenance still full of the final agony. I turned away in awe.